LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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An Island Man 



THE ARAN .ISLANDS 

By J*. M'l SYNGE 

With Drawings By 

JACK B. YEATS 



JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY 
BOSTON ::::::: 191, 



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Copyright 191 1 
By L. E. Bassett 



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DRAWI NGS 

An Island Man Frontispiece. 



Map of Islands 


Page 


i8 


The Pier 


a 


33 


The Hooker's Owner 


it 


5^ 


Kelp-Making 


a 


69 


The Evictions 


(t 


87 


Carrying Seaweed for Kelp 


(t 


115 


A Four-Oared Curagh 


a 


129 



* It 's real Heavy she is, Your 
Honour,' He said; ' I'm 
Thinking it's Gold There 
Will be In It.' 

Thatching 

Porter 

An Island Horseman 

The Man Who Told the Stories 



135 

151 

177 

209 
223 



INTRODUCTION 

In 1897, or thereabouts, as Mr. Yeats said 
in his interesting introduction to "The Well 
of the Saints/' John Synge was eking out a 
scanty subsistence in Paris, endeavoring to 
support himself by literature, with no very 
definite idea as to his aims, but full of sup- 
pressed vitality awaiting an adequate outlet 
for expression. It was then his ambition, 
native Irishman though he was, to become a 
competent critic of French literature, from 
the French point of view. In this somewhat 
hazy state of mind, Mr. Yeats found him, 
and, according to his story, persuaded him to 
abandon his immediate and somewhat un- 
profitable critical purpose, and to turn to 
account the creative impulse, which had 
hitherto been lying dormant within him. The 
poet himself was fresh from a trip to the Aran 
Islands, and the rude but healthy atmosphere 
of them and of their people had taken posses- 
sion of a nature ever keen to realise and appro- 
priate new sensations, particularly those which 
carried with them a deep and noble spiritual 
import. How magnetic their appeal to the 
stranger must be was never more fully illus- 
trated than in the intensity of the impression 
which Mr. Yeats had carried away with him 

IX 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

from the islands and communicated to 
Synge, — though the result, as the poet tells 
me, of but a single day's stay on Aranmor. 

Here then was a new motive set before 
Synge, a new direction for his literary 
energies, and one wherein he repudiated the 
art of the decadents, based as it was on the 
complicated experience and adjustment of 
modern life, for a return to nature as fresh 
and sincere in its courage and originality as 
the previous return had been of Coleridge and 
Wordsworth to the simple standard of truth 
and beauty. On this motive he acted, and 
in 1898 we find him, for the first time, in the 
Aran Islands. 

Picture this later Heine settling down in 
these wild and desolate islands, adapting him- 
self to simpler and ruder conditions of life, 
taking the people as he found them, and yet 
somehow, despite the wandering spirit that 
possessed him, succeeding tolerably well in 
domesticating himself, so that we find him 
rocking the baby's cradle or joining eagerly 
and naturally in the story-telling circles of an 
evening by the flickering firelight. 

That he made himself at home and was as 
well-liked by the people with whom he stopped 
as one of themselves is evidenced by the kindly 
memories which many of them who have 
since emigrated to America have treasured up 
of his presence among them and the quality 
of his personal magnetism. That he was a 
strange man they felt, as one of them has 
confessed to me; but that he was likable and 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

that he became known throughout the islands 
as the man who was staying at Patrick 
McDonagh's, is clear from the tone in which 
those Aran men and women whom I have 
met speak of him. 

Remember that to them he was simply a 
strange but kindly young man who was eager 
to learn all the Irish that they could teach 
him, and was fond of picking up strange 
stories of life in the islands from those who 
were prepared to tell them to him. And then 
remember also how many philologists and 
young poets and dramatists flocked to the 
islands, and especially to the home of Patrick 
McDonagh on the middle island of Inishmaan. 
Would it have been strange if among all of 
these, most of whom doubtless consciously 
told of their mission, the humble name of John 
Synge should have been all but forgotten? 
Again, he did not stay at Mr. McDonagh's 
cottage only. At first he went to the inn on 
Inishmore, the northern and largest island of 
the three. From Concannon's at The Seven 
Churches, he went over to Inishmaan realising 
that there, and there only, could he find the 
complete, whole-hearted life and temperament 
with which he sought to surround himself. 

It was in the McDonagh home that he 
found himself at last. Here he lived life as 
he had never lived it before, and the fruit 
of his experience is told in the pages of this 
book. It is to Inishmaan that we owe his 
two great tragedies. The stories were here 
told to him which formed the germs of 

XI 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

" Riders to the Sea " and " In the Shadow of 
the Glen." 

I have met and talked with men and women 
who came from each of the three islands, and 
though Synge stopped elsewhere than the 
places I have mentioned, — at Thomas Con- 
nelly's, for example, on Inishmaan, and at 
Michael Powell's on Inishere, the southern- 
most island — all associate him with the 
household in which he was truly happy, the 
household of Patrick McDonagh on Inish- 
maan. It is of this family that he has most 
to tell in the following pages, and it is from 
the lips of one of Patrick McDonagh's sons 
that I have been told of those whose names 
figure so often in this book. 

The psychological situation in which he and 
others who have come to America after him 
found themselves in reading these pages for 
the first time must have been a rare one, for 
therein they found depicted the lives of 
relatives and friends whom they have not 
seen for many years, and in at least one case 
I have met with a man who figured personally 
in the little volume. One and all, they agree 
that John Synge has reflected faithfully and 
sympathetically the life which he saw, and, 
though once or twice Mr. McDonagh has 
called my attention to a story or incident 
which was not familiar to him and whose 
truth he was therefore inclined to question, 
it is quite clear that the dramatist was keen 
enough to discard such stories as might have 
been told him in an irresponsible mood. The 

XII 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

only criticism that I have heard expressed was 
that Synge might have written a better book 
if he had told more about the sea and the 
birds and the storms, and less of the people, 
who, in their very quality of humanity, are 
slow to recognise the romantic beauty with 
which they are clothed in the eyes of strangers 
keen to feel and express life's spiritual values. 

The old story-teller whom Synge met on 
his first visit to the islands — a visit, by the 
way, which lasted only a month or six 
weeks, — is vividly remembered by the people 
whom I have met, as Pat Doran, the man who 
" could tell more lies in a day than four of us 
could in a month," and Synge's picture re- 
vived many old memories in their minds. 
That Doran had a sharply outlined personality 
is clear from the fact that Miss Costello, the 
daughter of the cess-collector of the islands, 
who comes from Kilronan on Inishmore, and 
who has told me much about the people, re- 
members him distinctly, though he was a 
native of Inishmaan and too infirm to leave 
the island at that time. 

" Michael," the boy who taught Synge 
Irish, is the son of Patrick McDonagh, and 
his real name is Martin. He has married and 
settled down on the island,, though his elder 
brother has come to America. His brother 
remembers Synge well, and often taught him 
also. His wife is from Inishere, but does not 
remember Synge. 

These people have memories of many 
another who has gone to the islands in the 

XIII 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

past, — of John MacNeill and Stephen Barrett, 
well-known Irish scholars and mighty fisher- 
men, — of Father Eugene O'Growney, whose 
Irish text-books have become classic and 
circulate wherever Irish is spoken or studied, 

— of Lady Gregory who came many times, 
endearing herself to the people by her simple 
kindliness and companionship, — of Finck, the 
German who has given us the only dictionary 
and grammar that we have of the Aran dialect, 

— and of Pedersen and Jeremiah Curtin, — 
while older memories of Kilronan folk go back 
to the days of Sir William Wilde and Petrie. 

The picture they draw of these men posted 
at the door of the cottage with notebook and 
pencil ready to dart out when a stranger 
passed and ask him the word in Irish for 
" bed " or " stone " or *^ mackerel " sheds a 
bright light on the way that Synge learnt his 
Gaelic, and it betokens a high quality of per- 
severing endeavor that under these circum- 
stances he should have mastered the idiom 
perfectly, and that he has bended it and 
moulded it to his uses in such a wonderful 
creative way. 

That people have not been slow to learn of 
these islands and their charm is instanced by 
the fact that Mr. McDonagh has been com- 
pelled to add rooms on to his cottage, and that 
even now people have to wait their turn to 
come and stay with the family who are, after 
all, responsible in a very direct manner for the 
stimulus which Synge translated by genius 
into the creative work of his plays. 

XIV 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Yet with all the glamor of romance that 
Synge and others have cast over these islands, 
the people who have come to America express 
no desire to return permanently to their father- 
land. " I 'd like to be going back and seeing 
the old lady, and the islands, too, especially 
after reading this book. But I 'm thinking 
two or three weeks would be enough, unless 
I was a rich man, and then maybe I 'd like to 
stay for a year." Such is the feeling they 
express, and indeed it is a hard life they have 
escaped. " The wet is our glory," one man 
said. " We are in it all day, and then at night 
we can tumble into a feather bed so deep you 
can't see yourself." Doctors are scorned as 
is natural by a people whose life is one 
of continual struggle and danger. " We send 
for the priest before the doctor if a man has 
a pain in his heart." 

And yet though this life of theirs has begot 
a stern tradition, so stern that the tale told in 
" Riders to the Sea " seems no strange or 
unusual happening to them, none the less, for 
all that, the family tie is deep and tender. 
When I told of my wish to go to these islands 
and to bring from America the messages of all 
who had left their homes in the old country 
so many years before, one said in a tone of 
simple beauty, " I m thinking when the old 
lady hears that you come from her son, she 
sure will have a kiss of you first of all." 

And perhaps the pleasantest outcome of all 
that Synge has written in this little book about 
the Aran Islands is to rekindle in the hearts 

XV 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

of those who have left their homes the old 
memories of pleasant though arduous years 
amid their kin in the far-off isles of Aran, 
those isles from which on a clear and sunny- 
morning, you may see, as it was given to 
Synge to see, far off on the horizon the Land 
of Heart's Desire. 

Edward J. O'Brien. 
1911. 



XVI 



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AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 

The geography of the Aran Islands is very- 
simple, yet it may need a word to itself. 
There are three islands : Aranmor, the north 
island, about nine miles long; Inishmaan, the 
middle island, about three miles and a half 
across, and nearly round in form; and the 
south island, Inishere — in Irish, east island, 
— like the middle island but slightly smaller. 
They lie about thirty miles from Galway, 
up the centre of the bay, but they are not far 
from the cliffs of County Clare, on the south, 
or the corner of Connemara on the north. 

Kilronan, the principal village on Aranmor, 
has been so much changed by the fishing 
industry, developed there by the Congested 
Districts Board, that it has now very little 
to distinguish it from any fishing village 
on the west coast of Ireland. The other 
islands are more primitive, but even on them 
many changes are being made, that it was 
not worth while to deal with in the text. 

In the pages that follow I have given a 
direct account of my life on the islands, and 
19 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

of what I met with among them, inventing 
nothing, and changing nothing that is 
essential. As far as possible, however, I have 
disguised the identity of the people I speak 
of, by making changes in their names, and 
in the letters I quote, and by altering some 
local and family relationships. I have had 
nothing to say about them that was not 
wholly in their favour, but I have made this 
disguise to keep them from ever feeling that 
a too direct use had been made of their kind- 
ness, and friendship, for which I am more 
grateful than it is easy to say. 



20 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Part I 

I AM in Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, 
listening to a murmur of Gaelic that is rising 
from a little public-house under my room. 

The steamer which comes to Aran sails 
according to the tide, and it was six o'clock 
this morning when we left the quay of Galway 
in a dense shroud of mist. 

A low line of shore was visible at first on 
the right between the movement of the waves 
and fog, but when we came further it was 
lost sight of, and nothing could be seen but 
the mist curling in the rigging, and a small 
circle of foam. 

There were few passengers; a couple of 
men going out with young pigs tied loosely 
in sacking, three or four young girls who 
sat in the cabin with their heads completely 
twisted in their shawls, and a builder, on his 
way to repair the pier at Kilronan, who 
walked up and down and talked with me. 

In about three hours Aran came in sight. 
A dreary rock appeared at first sloping up 
from the sea into the fog; then, as we drew 
nearer, a coast-guard station and the village. 

21 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

A little later I was wandering out along the 
one good roadway of the island, looking over 
low walls on either side into small flat fields 
of naked rock. I have seen nothing so 
desolate. Grey floods of water were sweeping 
everywhere upon the limestone, making at 
times a wild torrent of the road, which twined 
continually over low hills and cavities in the 
rock or passed between a few small fields of 
potatoes or grass hidden away in corners that 
had shelter. Whenever the cloud lifted I 
could see the edge of the sea below me on the 
right, and the naked ridge of the island above 
me on the other side. Occasionally I passed 
a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of 
stone pillars with crosses above them and 
inscriptions asking- a prayer for the soul of 
the person they commemorated. 

I met few people ; but here and there a band 
of tall girls passed me on their way to Kil- 
ronan, and called out to me with humorous 
wonder, speaking English with a slight 
foreign intonation that differed a good deal 
from the brogue of Gal way. The rain and 
cold seemed to have no influence on their 
vitality, and as they hurried past me with eager 
laughter and great talking in Gaelic, they left 
the wet masses of rock more desolate than 
before. 

A little after midday when I was coming 
back one old half -blind man spoke to me in 
Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the 
abundance and fluency of the foreign tongue. 

In the afternoon the rain continued, so I sat 

22 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

here in the inn looking out through the mist 
at a few men who were unlading hookers that 
had come in with turf from Connemara, and 
at the long-legged pigs that were playing in 
the surf. As the fishermen came in and out 
of the public-house underneath my room, I 
could hear throus;-!! the broken panes that a 
number of them still used the Gaelic, though 
it seems to be falling out of use among the 
younger people of this village. 

The old woman of the house had promised 
to get me a teacher of the language, and after 
a while I heard a shuffling on the stairs, and 
the old dark man I had spoken to in the 
morning groped his way into the room. 

I brought him over to the fire, and we 
talked for many hours. He told me that he 
had known Petrie and Sir William Wilde, and 
many living antiquarians, and had taught 
Irish to Dr. Finck and Dr. Pedersen, and 
given stories to Mr. Curtin of America. A 
little after middle age he had fallen over a 
cliff, and since then he had had little eyesight, 
and a trembling of his hands and head. 

As we talked he sat huddled together over 
the fire, shaking and blind, yet his face was 
indescribably pliant, lighting up with an 
ecstasy of humour when he told me anything 
that had a point of wit or malice, and growing 
sombre and desolate again when he spoke of 
religion or the fairies. 

He had great confidence in his own powers 
and talent, and in the superiority of his stories 
over all other stories in the world. When we 
23 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

were speaking of Mr. Cur tin, he told me that 
this gentleman had brought out a volume of 
his Aran stories in America, and made five 
hundred pounds by the sale of them. 

'And what do you think he did then?' he 
continued ; *he wrote a book of his own stories 
after making that lot of money with mine. 
And he brought them out, and the divil a half- 
penny did he get for them. Would you be- 
lieve that ?' 

Afterwards he told me how one of his chil- 
dren had been taken by the fairies. 

One day a neighbor was passing, and she 
said, when she saw it on the road, 'That's a 
fine child.' 

Its mother tried to say 'God bless it,' but 
something choked the words in her throat. 

A while later they found a wound on its 
neck, and for three nights the house was filled 
with noises. 

T never wear a shirt at night,' he said, 'but 
I got up out of my bed, all naked as I was, 
when I heard the noises in the house, and 
lighted a light, but there was nothing in it.' 

Then a dummy came and made signs of 
hammering nails in a coffin. 

The next day the seed potatoes were full of 
blood, and the child told his mother that he 
was going to America. 

That night it died, and 'Believe me,' said 
the old man, 'the fairies were in it.' 

When he went away, a little bare-footed 
girl was sent up with turf and the bellows to 
make a fire that would last for the evening. 
24 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

She was shy, yet eager to talk, and told me 
that she had good spoken Irish, and was learn- 
ing to read it in the school, and that she had 
been twice to Galway, though there are many 
grown women in the place who have never set 
a foot upon the mainland. 

The rain has cleared off, and I have had my 
first real introduction to the island and its 
people. 

I went out through Killeany — the poorest 
village in Aranmor — to a long neck of sand- 
hill that runs out into the sea towards the 
south-west. As I lay there on the grass the 
clouds lifted from the Connemara mountains 
and, for a moment, the green undulating fore- 
ground, backed in the distance by a mass of 
hills, reminded me of the country near Rome. 
Then the dun top-sail of a hooker swept above 
the edge of the sandhill and revealed the pre- 
sence of the sea. 

As I moved on a boy and a man came down 
from the next village to talk to me, and I 
found that here, at least, English was imper- 
fectly understood. When I asked them if 
there were any trees in the island they held a 
hurried consultation in Gaelic, and then the 
man asked if *tree' meant the same thing as 
*bush,* for if so there were a few in sheltered 
hollows to the east. 

They walked on with me to the sound which 
separates this island from Inishmaan — the 
middle island of the group — and showed me 

25 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the roll from the Atlantic running up between 
two walls of cliff. 

They told me that several men had stayed 
on Inishmaan to learn Irish, and the boy 
pointed out a line of hovels where they had 
lodged running like a belt of straw round the 
middle of the island. The place looked hardly 
fit for habitation. There was no green to be 
seen, and no sign of the people except these 
beehive-like roofs, and the outline of a Dun 
that stood out above them against the edge of 
the sky. 

After a while my companions went away 
and two other boys came and walked at my 
heels, till I turned and made them talk to me. 
They spoke at first of their poverty, and then 
one of them said — 

T dare say you do have to pay ten shillings 
a week in the hotel?' 

'More,' I answered. 

Twelve?' 

'More.' 

'Fifteen?' 

'More still.' 

Then he drew back and did not question me 
any further, either thinking that I had lied to 
check his curiosity, or too awed by my riches 
to continue. 

Repassing Killeany I was joined by a man 
who had spent twenty years in America, where 
he had lost his health and then returned, so 
long ago that he had forgotten English and 
could hardly make me understand him. He 
seemed hopeless, dirty, and asthmatic, and 
26 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

after going with me for a few hundred yards 
he stopped and asked for coppers. I had none 
left, so I gave him a fill of tobacco, and he 
went back to his hovel. 

When he was gone, two little girls took 
their place behind me and I drew them in turn 
into conversation. 

They spoke with a delicate exotic intona- 
tion that was full of charm, and told me with 
a sort of chant how they guide iadies and 
g-intlemins' in the summer to all that is worth 
seeing in their neighbourhood, and sell them 
pampooties and maidenhair ferns, which are 
common among the rocks. 

We were now in Kilronan, and as we parted 
they showed me holes in their own pampooties, 
or cowskin sandals, and asked me the price of 
new ones. I told them that my purse was 
empty, and then with a few quaint words of 
blessing they turned away from me and went 
down to the pier. 

All this walk back had been extraordinarily 
fine. The intense insular clearness one sees 
only in Ireland, and after rain, was throwing 
out every ripple in the sea and sky, and every 
crevice in the hills beyond the bay. 

This evening an old man came to see me, 
and said he had known a relative of mine who 
passed some time on this island forty-three 
years ago. 

T was standing under the pier-wall mending- 
nets,' he said, 'when you came off the steamer, 
and I said to myself in that moment, if there 
27 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

is a man of the name of Synge left walking 
the world, it is that man yonder will be he.' 

He went on to complain in curiously simple 
yet dignified language of the changes that have 
taken place here since he left the island to go 
to sea before the end of his childhood. 

*I have come back/ he said, *to live in a bit 
of a house with my sister. The island is not 
the same at all to what it was. It is little good 
I can get from the people who are in it now, 
and anything I have to give them they don't 
care to have.' 

From what I hear this man seems to have 
shut himself up in a world of individual con- 
ceits and theories, and to live aloof at his 
trade of net-mending, regarded by the other 
islanders with respect and half -ironical sym- 
pathy. 

A little later when I went down to the 
kitchen I found two men from Inishmaan 
who had been benighted on the island. They 
seemed a simpler and perhaps a more inter- 
esting type than the people here, and talked 
with careful English about the history of the 
Duns, and the Book of Ballymote, and the 
Book of Kells, and other ancient MSS., with 
the names of which they seemed familiar. 

In spite of the charm of my teacher, the 
old blind man I met the day of my arrival, 
I have decided to move on to Inishmaan, 
where Gaelic is more generally used, and the 
life is perhaps the most primitive that is left 
in Europe. 

28 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I spent all this last day with my blind 
guide, looking at the antiquities that abound 
in the west or north-west of the island. 

As we set out I noticed among the groups 
of girls who smiled at our fellowship — old 
Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with 
its pipit — a beautiful oval face with the sin- 
gularly spiritual expression that is so marked 
in one type of the West Ireland women. 
Later in the day, as the old man talked con- 
tinually of the fairies and the women they 
have taken, it seemed that there was a possible 
link between the wild mythology that is ac- 
cepted on the islands and the strange beauty 
of the women. 

At midday we rested near the ruins of a 
house, and two beautiful boys came up and sat 
near us. Old Mourteen asked them why the 
house was in ruins, and who had lived in it. 

*A rich farmer built it a while since,' they 
said, *but after two years he was driven away 
by the fairy host.' 

The boys came on with us some distance 
to the north to visit one of the ancient beehive 
dwellings that is still in perfect preservation. 
When we crawled in on our hands and knees, 
and stood up in the gloom of the interior, 
old Mourteen took a freak of earthly humour 
and began telling what he would have done 
if he could have come in there when he was a 
young man and a young girl along with him. 

Then he sat down in the middle of the floor 
and began to recite old Irish poetry, with an 
exquisite purity of intonation that brought 
29 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

tears to my eyes though I understood but little 
of the meaning. 

On our way home he gave me the Catholic 
theory of the fairies. 

When Lucifer saw himself in the glass 
he thought himself equal with God. Then the 
Lord threw him out of Heaven, and all the 
angels that belonged to him. While He was 
'chucking them out,' an archangel asked Him 
to spare some of them, and those that were 
falling are in the air still, and have power to 
wreck ships, and to work evil in the world. 

From this he wandered off into tedious 
matters of theology, and repeated many long 
prayers and sermons in Irish that he had heard 
from the priests. 

A little further on we came to a slated 
house, and I asked him who was living in it. 

'A kind of a schoolmistress,' he said; then 
his old face puckered with a gleam of pagan 
malice. 

'Ah, master,' he said, 'wouldn't it be fine 
to be in there, and to be kissing her ?' 

A couple of miles from this village we 
turned aside to look at an old ruined church 
of the Ceathair Aluinn (The Four Beautiful 
Persons), and a holy well near it that is 
famous for cures of blindness and epilepsy. 

As we sat near the well a very old man came 
up from a cottage near the road, and told me 
how it had become famous. 

'A woman of Sligo had a son who was born 
blind, and one night she dreamed that she saw 
an island with a blessed well in it that could 

30 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

t 
cure her son. She told her dream in the 
morning, and an old man said it was of Aran 
she was after dreaming. 

'She brought her son down by the coast of 
Galway, and came out in a curagh, and landed 
below where you see a bit of a cove. 

'She walked up then to the house of my 
father — God rest his soul — and she told them 
what she was looking for. 

'My father said that there was a well like 
what she had dreamed of, and that he would 
send a boy along with her to show her the 
way. 

' "There's no need, at all," said she ; 
"haven't I seen it all in my dream?" 

Then she went out with the child and 
walked up to this well, and she kneeled down 
and began saying her prayers. Then she put 
her hand out for the water, and put it on his 
eyes, and the moment it touched him he called 
out : "O mother, look at the pretty flowers !" * 

After that Mourteen described the feats of 
poteen drinking and fighting that he did in 
his youth, and went on to talk of Diarmid, 
who was the strongest man after Samson, and 
of one of the beds of Diarmid and Grainne, 
which is on the east of the island. He says 
that Diarmid was killed by the druids, who 
put a burning shirt on him, — a fragment of 
mythology that may connect Diarmid with 
the legend of Hercules, if it is not due to the 
'learning' in some hedge-school master's 
ballad. 

Then we talked about Inishmaan. 

31 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

'You'll have an old man to talk with you 
over there/ he said, 'and tell you stories of 
the fairies, but he's walking about with two 
sticks under him this ten year. Did ever you 
hear what it is goes on four legs when it is 
young, and on two legs after that, and on 
three legs when it does be old ? ' 

I gave him the answer. 

' Ah, master,' he said, ' you're a cute one, 
and the blessing of God be on you. Well, 
I'm on three legs this minute, but the old man 
beyond is back on four; I don't know if I'm 
better than the way he is; he's got his sight 
and I'm only an old dark man.' 

I am settled at last on Inishmaan in a small 
cottage with a continual drone of Gaelic 
coming from the kitchen that opens into my 
room. 

Early this morning the man of the house 
came over for me with a four-oared curagh — 
that is, a curagh with four rowers and four 
oars on either side, as each man uses two — 
and we set off a little before noon. 

It gave me a moment of exquisite satis- 
faction to find myself moving away from 
civilisation in this rude canvas canoe of a 
model that has served primitive races since 
men first went on the sea. 

We had to stop for a moment at a hulk 
that is anchored in the bay, to make some ar- 
rangements for the fish-curing of the middle 
island, and my crew called out as soon as 
we were within earshot that they had a man 

32 




The Pier 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

with them who had been in France a month 
from this day. 

When we started again, a small sail was 
run up in the bow, and we set off across the 
sound with a leaping oscillation that had no 
resemblance to the heavy movement of a boat. 

The sail is only used as an aid. so the men 
coiltinued to row after it had gone up, and 
as they occupied the four cross-seats I lay on 
the canvas at the stern and the frame of 
slender laths, which bent and quivered as the 
waves passed under them. 

When we set off it was a brilliant morning 
of April, and the green, glittering waves 
seemed to toss the canoe among themselves, 
yet as we drew nearer this island a sudden 
thunderstorm broke out behind the rocks we 
were approaching, and lent a momentary 
tumult to this still vein of the Atlantic. 

We landed at a small pier, from which a 
rude track leads up to the village between 
small fields and bare sheets of rock like those 
in Aranmor. The youngest son of my boat- 
man, a boy of about seventeen, who is to be 
my teacher and guide, was waiting for me at 
the pier and guided me to his house, while the 
men settled the curagh and followed slowly 
with my baggage. 

My room is at one end of the cottage, with 
a boarded floor and ceiling, and two windows 
opposite each other. Then there is the kitchen 
with earth floor and open rafters, and two 
doors opposite each other opening into the 

35 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

open air, but no windows. Beyond it there 
are two small rooms of half the width of the 
kitchen with one window apiece. 

The kitchen itself, where I will spend most 
of my time, is full of beauty and distinction. 
The red dresses of the women who cluster 
round the fire on their stools give a glow 
of almost Eastern richness, and the walls have 
been toned by the turf-smoke to a soft brown 
that blends with the grey earth-colour of the 
floor. Many sorts of fishing-tackle, and the 
nets and oil-skins of the men, are hung upon 
the walls or among the open rafters; and 
right overhead, under the thatch, there is a 
whole cowskin from which they make 
pampooties. 

Every article on these islands has an almost 
personal character, which gives this simple 
life, where all art is unknown, something of 
the artistic beauty of mediaeval life. The 
curaghs and spinning-wheels, the tiny wooden 
barrels that are still much used in the place 
of earthenware, the home-made cradles, 
churns, and baskets, are all full of individual- 
ity, and being made from materials that are 
common here, yet to some extent peculiar to 
the island, they seem to exist as a natural link 
between the people and the world that is about 
them. 

The simplicity and unity of the dress in- 
creases in another way the local air of beauty. 
The women wear red petticoats and jackets 
of the island wool stained with madder, to 
which they usually add a plaid shawl twisted 

36 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

round their chests and tied at their back. 
When it rains they throw another petticoat 
over their heads with the waistband round 
their faces, or, if they are young, they use 
a heavy shawl Hke those worn in Galway. 
Occasionally other wraps are worn, and during 
the thunderstorm I arrived in I saw several 
girls with men's waistcoats buttoned round 
their bodies. Their skirts do not come much 
below the knee, and show their powerful legs 
in the heavy indigo stockings with which they 
are all provided. 

The men wear three colours: the natural 
wool, indigo, and a grey flannel that is woven 
of alternate threads of indigo and the natural 
wool. In Aranmor many of the younger men 
have adopted the usual fisherman's jersey, but 
I have only seen one on this island. 

As flannel is cheap — the women spin the 
yarn from the wool of their own sheep, and 
it is then woven by a weaver in Kilronan for 
fourpence a yard — the men seem to wear an 
indefinite number of waistcoats and woollen 
drawers one over the other. They are 
usually surprised at the lightness of my own 
dress, and one old man I spoke to for a 
minute on the pier, when I came ashore, 
asked me if I was not cold with ^ my little 
clothes.' 

As I sat in the kitchen to dry the spray 
from my coat, several men who had seen me 
walking up came in to me to talk to me, 
usually murmuring on the threshold, * The 

?>7 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

blessing of God on this place/ or some sim- 
ilar words. 

The courtesy of the old woman of the 
house is singularly attractive, and though I 
could not understand much of what she said — 
she has no English — I could see with how 
much grace she motioned each visitor to a 
chair, or stool, according to his age, and said 
a few words to him till he drifted into our 
JEnglish conversation. 

For the moment my own arrival is the 
chief subject of interest, and the men who 
come in are eager to talk to me. 

Some of them express themselves more 
correctly than the ordinary peasant, others use 
the Gaelic idioms continually and substitute 

* he * or ' she ' for ' it,' as the neuter pronoun 
is not found in modern Irish. 

A few of the men have a curiously full 
vocabulary, others know only the commonest 
words in English, and are driven to ingenious 
devices to express their meaning. Of all the 
subjects we can talk of war seems their fav- 
ourite, and the conflict between America and 
Spain is causing a great deal of excitement. 
Nearly all the families have relations who have 
had to cross the Atlantic, and all eat of the 
flour and bacon that is brought from the 
United States, so they have a vague fear that 

* if anything happened to America,' their own 
island would cease to be habitable. 

Foreign languages are another favourite 
topic, and as these men are bilingual they have 
a fair notion of what it means to speak and 

38 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

think in many different idioms. Most of the 
strangers they see on the islands are philolog- 
ical students, and the people have been led 
to conclude that linguistic studies, particularly 
Gaelic studies, are the chief occupation of 
the outside world. 

^ I have seen Frenchmen, and Danes, and 
Germans,' said one man, ' and there does be 
a power a Irish books along with them, and 
they reading them better than ourselves. Be- 
lieve me there are few rich men now in the 
world who are not studying the Gaelic' 

They sometimes ask me the French for 
simple phrases, and when they have listened 
to the intonation for a moment, most of them 
are able to reproduce it with admirable pre- 
cision. 

When I was going out this morning to walk 
round the island with Michael, the boy wha 
is teaching me Irish, I met an old man making 
his way down to the cottage. He was dressed 
in miserable black clothes which seemed to 
have come from the mainland, and was so 
bent with rheumatism that, at a little distance, 
he looked more like a spider than a human 
being. 

Michael told me it was Pat Dirane, the 
story-teller old Mourteen had spoken of on 
the other island. I wished to turn back, as he 
appeared to be on his way to visit me, but 
Michael would not hear of it. 

* He will be sitting by the fire when we come 
in/ he said ; ' let you not be afraid, there will 

39 



/ 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

be time enough to be talking to him by and by.' 

He was right. As I came down into the 
kitchen some hours later old Pat was still in 
the chimney-corner, blinking with the turf 
smoke. 

He spoke English with remarkable aptness 
and fluency, due, I believe, to the months he 
spent in the English provinces working at the 
harvest when he was a young man. 

After a few formal compliments he told me 
how he had been crippled by an attack of the 
'old hin ' (i.e the influenza), and had been 
complaining ever since in addition to his 
rheumatism. 

While the old woman was cooking my 
dinner he asked me if I liked stories, and 
offered to tell one in English, though he added, 
it would be much better if I could follow the 
Gaelic. Then he began : — 

There were two farmers in County Clare. 
One had a son, and the other, a fine rich man, 
had a daughter. 

The young man was wishing to marry the 
girl, and his father told him to try and get 
her if he thought well, though a power of gold 
would be wanting to get the like of her. 

' I will try,' said the young man. 

He put all his gold into a bag. Then he 
went over to the other farm, and threw in the 
gold in front of him. 

' Is that all gold ? ' said the father of the 
girl. 

40 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* All gold,' said O'Conor (the young man's 
name was O'Conor). 

' It will not weigh down my daughter,' said 
the father. 

* We'll see that,' said O'Conor. 

Then they put them in the scales, the 
daughter in one side and the gold in the other. 
The girl went down against the ground, so 
O'Conor took his bag and went out on the 
road. 

As he was going along he came to where 
there was a little man, and he standing with 
his back against the wall. 

* Where are you going with the bag ? ' said 
the little man. 

* Going home,' said O'Conor. 

Ts it gold you might be wanting ? ' said the 
man. 

' It is, surely,' said O'Conor. 

* I'll give you what you are wanting,' said 
the man, * and we can bargain in this 
way — you'll pay me back in a year the gold 
I give you, or you'll pay me with five pounds 
cut off your own flesh.' 

That bargain was made between them. The 
man gave a bag of gold to O'Conor, and he 
went back with it, and was married to the 
young woman. 

They were rich people, and he built her a 
grand castle on the cliffs of Clare, with a 
window that looked out straight over the wild 
ocean. 

One day when he went up with his wife to 
look out over the wild ocean, he saw a ship 

41 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

coming in on the rocks, and no sails on her 
at all. She was wrecked on the rocks, and 
it was tea that was in her, and fine silk. 

O' Conor and his wife went down to look 
at the wreck, and when the lady O'Conor saw 
the silk she said she wished a dress of it. 

They got the silk from the sailors, and 
when the Captain came up to get the money 
for it, O' Conor asked him to come again and 
take his dinner with them. They had a grand 
dinner, and they drank after it, and the 
Captain was tipsy. While they were still 
drinking, a letter came to O' Conor, and it was 
in the letter that a friend of his was dead, 
and that he would have to go away on a long 
journey. As he was getting ready the Captain 
came to him. 

* Are you fond of your wife?' said the 
Captain. 

' I am fond of her,' said O'Conor. 

* Will you make me a bet of twenty guineas 
no man comes near her while you'll be away 
on the journey?' said the Captain. 

'I will bet it,' said O'Conor; and he went 
away. 

There was an old hag who sold small things 
on the road near the castle, and the lady 
O'Conor allowed her to sleep up in her room 
in a big box. The Captain went down on the 
road to the old hag. 

* For how much will you let me sleep one 
night in your box ? ' said the Captain. 

* For no money at all would I do such a 
thing,' said the hag. 

42 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

' For ten guineas ? ' said the Captain. 

' Not for ten guineas,' said the hag. 

' For twelve guineas ? ' said the Captain. 

* Not for twelve guineas,' said the hag. 

' For fifteen guineas ? ' said the Captain. 

' For fifteen I will do it,' said the hag. 

Then she took him up and hid him in the 
box. When night came the lady O'Conor 
walked up into her room, and the Captain 
watched her through a hole that was in the 
box. He saw her take off her two rings and 
put them on a kind of a board that was over 
her head like a chimney-piece, and take off 
her clothes, except her shift, and go up into 
her bed. 

As soon as she was asleep the Captain came 
out of his box, and he had some means of 
making a light, for he lit the candle. He went 
over to the bed where she was sleeping with- 
out disturbing her at all, or doing any bad 
thing, and he took the two rings off the board, 
and blew out the light, and went down again 
into the box. 

He paused for a moment, and a deep sigh 
of relief rose from the men and women who 
had crowded in while the story was going on, 
till the kitchen was filled with people. 

As the Captain was coming out of his box 
the girls, who had appeared to know no 
English, stopped their spinning and held their 
breath with expectation. 

The old man went on — 

43 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

When O'Conor came back the Captain met 
him, and told him that he had been a night 
in his wife's room, and gave him the two rings. 

O'Conor gave him the twenty guineas of the 
bet. Then he went up into the castle, and he 
took his wife up to look out of the window 
over the wild ocean. While she was looking 
he pushed her from behind, and she fell down 
over the cliff into the sea. 

An old woman was on the shore, and she 
saw her falling. She went down then to the 
surf and pulled her out all wet and in great 
disorder, and she took the wet clothes off her, 
and put on some old rags belonging to herself. 

When O'Conor had pushed his wife from 
the window he went away into the land. 

After a while the lady O'Conor went out 
searching for him, and when she had gone 
here and there a long time in the country, she 
heard that he was reaping in a field with sixty 
men. 

She came to the field and she wanted to go 
in, but the gate-man would not open the gate 
for her. Then the owner came by, and she 
told him her story. He brought her in, and 
her husband was there, reaping, but he never 
gave any sign of knowing her. She showed 
him to the owner, and he made the man come 
out and go with his wife. 

Then the lady O'Conor took him out on the 
road where there were horses, and they rode 
away. 

When they came to the place where O'Conor 

44 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

had met the little man, he was there on the 
road before them. 

* Have you my gold on you ? ' said the man. 
' I have not/ said O'Conor. 

' Then you '11 pay me the flesh off your 
body,' said the man. 

They went into a house, and a knife was 
brovight, and a clean white cloth was put on 
the table, and O'Conor was put upon the cloth. 

Then the little man was going to strike the 
lancet into him, when says lady O'Conor — 

' Have you bargained for five pounds of 
flesh?' 

* For five pounds of flesh,' said the man. 

' Have you bargained for any drop of his 
blood ? ' said lady O'Conor. 

' For no blood,' said the man. 

' Cut out the flesh,' said lady O'Conor, ' but 
if you spill one drop of his blood I '11 put that 
through you.' And she put a pistol to his head. 

The little man went away and they saw no 
more of him. 

When they got home to their castle they 
made a great supper, and they invited the 
Captain and the old hag, and the old woman 
that had pulled the lady O'Conor out of the 
sea. 

After they had eaten well the lady O'Conor 
began, and she said they would all tell their 
stories. Then she told how she had been saved 
from the sea, and how she had found her 
husband. 

Then the old woman told her story, the way 
she had found the lady O'Conor wet, and in 

45 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

great disorder, and had brought her in and 
put on her some old rags of her own. 

The lady O' Conor asked the Captain for 
his story, but he said they would get no story 
from him. Then she took her pistol out of 
her pocket, and she put it on the edge of the 
table, and she said that any one that would 
not tell his story would get a bullet into him. 

Then the Captain told the way he had got 
into the box, and come over to her bed without 
touching her at all, and had taken away the 
rings. 

Then the lady O'Conor took the pistol and 
shot the hag through the body, and they threw 
her over the cliff into the sea. 

That is my story. 

It gave me a strange feeling of wonder to 
hear this illiterate native of a wet rock in the 
Atlantic telling a story that is so full of 
European associations. 

The incident of the faithful wife takes us 
beyond Cymbeline to the sunshine on the Arno, 
and the gay company who went out from 
Florence to tell narratives of love. It takes 
us again to the low vineyards of Wtirzburg on 
the Main, where the same tale was told in the 
middle ages, of the ' Two Merchants and the 
Faithful Wife of Ruprecht von Wiirzburg.' 

The other portion, dealing with the pound 
of flesh, has a still wider distribution, reaching 
from Persia and Egypt to the Gesta 
Romanorum, and the Pecorone of Ser 
Giovanni, a Florentine notary. 

46 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

The present union of the two tales has 
already been found among the Gaels, and 
there is a somewhat similar version in Camp- 
bell's Popular Tales oi the Western Highlands. 

Michael walks so fast when I am out with 
him that I cannot pick my steps, and the 
sharp-edged fossils which abound in the lime- 
stone have cut my shoes to pieces. 

The family held a consultation on them last 
night, and in the end it was decided to make 
me a pair of pampooties, which I have been 
wearing to-day among the rocks. 

They consist simply of a piece of raw 
cowskin, with the hair outside, laced over the 
toe and round the heel with two ends of 
fishing-line that work round and are tied above 
the instep. 

In the evening, when they are taken off, 
they are placed in a basin of water, as the 
rough hide cuts the foot and stocking if it is 
allowed to harden. For the same reason the 
people often step into the surf during the day, 
so that their feet are continually moist. 

At first I threw my weight upon my heels, 
as one does naturally in a boot, and was a 
good deal bruised, but after a few hours I 
learned the natural walk of man, and could 
follow my guide in any portion of the island. 

In one district below the cliffs, towards the 
north, one goes for nearly a mile jumping 
from one rock to another without a single 
ordinary step; and here I realized that toes 
have a natural use, for I found myself 

47 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

jumping towards any tiny crevice in the rock 
before me, and clinging with an eager grip 
in which all the muscles of my feet ached from 
their exertion. 

The absence of the heavy boot of Europe 
has preserved to these people the agile walk 
of the wild animal, while the general simplicity 
of their lives has given them many other 
points of physical perfection. Their way of 
life has never been acted on by anything much 
more artificial than the nests and burrows of 
the creatures that live round them, and they 
seem, in a certain sense, to approach more 
nearly to the finer types of our aristocracies 
— who are bred artificially to a natural ideal — 
than to the labourer or citizen, as the wild 
horse resembles the thoroughbred rather than 
the hack or cart-horse. Tribes of the same 
natural development are, perhaps, frequent in 
half-civilized countries, but here a touch of the 
refinement of old societies is blended, with 
singular effect, among the qualities of the 
wild animal. 

While I am walking with Michael some one 
often comes to me to ask the time of day. 
Few of the people, however, are sufficiently 
used to modern time to understand in more 
than a vague way the convention of the hours, 
and when I tell them what o'clock it is by my 
watch they are not satisfied, and ask how long 
is left them before the twilight. 

The general knowledge of time on the 
island depends, curiously enough, on the direc- 
tion of the wind. Nearly all the cottages are 

48 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

built, like this one, with two doors opposite 
each other, the more sheltered of which lies 
open all day to give light to the interior. If 
the wind is northerly the south door is opened, 
and the shadow of the door-post moving 
across the kitchen floor indicates the hour; 
as soon, however, as the wind changes to the 
south the other door is opened, and the people, 
who never think of putting up a primitive dial, 
are at a loss. 

This system of doorways has another 
curious result. It usually happens that all the 
doors on one side of the village pathway are 
lying open with women sitting about on the 
thresholds, while on the other side the doors 
are shut and there is no sign of life. The 
moment the wind changes everything is re- 
versed, and sometimes when I come back to 
the village after an hour's walk there seems 
to have been a general flight from one side of 
the way to the other. 

In my own cottage the change of the doors 
alters the whole tone of the kitchen, turning 
it from a brilliantly-lighted room looking out 
on a yard and laneway to a sombre cell with a 
superb view of the sea. 

When the wind is from the north the old 
woman manages my meals with fair regularity, 
but on the other days she often makes my tea 
at three o'clock instead of six. If I refuse 
it she puts it down to simmer for three hours 
in the turf, and then brings it in at six o'clock 
full of anxiety to know if it is warm enough. 
The old man is suggesting that I should 

49 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

send him a clock when I go away. He 'd Hke 
to have something from me in the house, he 
says, the way they wouldn't forget me, and 
wouldn't a clock be as handy as another thing, 
and they 'd be thinking on me whenever they 'd 
look on its face. 

The general ignorance of any precise hours 
in the day makes it impossible for the people 
to have regular meals. 

They seem to eat together in the evening, 
and sometimes in the morning, a little after 
dawn, before they scatter for their work, but 
during the day they simply drink a cup of tea 
and eat a piece of bread, or some potatoes, 
whenever they are hungry. 

For men who live in the open air they eat 
strangely little. Often when Michael has been 
out weeding potatoes for eight or nine hours 
without food, he comes in and eats a few 
slices of home-made bread, and then he is 
ready to go out with me and wander for hours 
about the island. 

They use no animal food except a little 
bacon and salt fish. The old woman says she 
would be very ill if she ate fresh meat. 

Some years ago, before tea, sugar, and flour 
had come into general use, salt fish was much 
more the staple article of diet than ^ present, 
and, I am told, skin diseases were very 
common, though they are now rare on the 
islands. 

No one who has not lived for weeks among 
these grey clouds and seas can realise the joy 

50 




The Hooker's Owner 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

with which the eye rests on the red dresses of 
the women, especially when a number of them 
are to be found together, as happened early 
this morning. 

I heard that the young cattle were to be 
shipped for a fair on the mainland, which is 
to take place in a few days, and I went down 
on the pier, a little after dawn, to watch them. 

The bay was shrouded in the greys of 
coming rain, yet the thinness of the cloud 
threw a silvery light on the sea, and an unusual 
depth of blue to the mountains of Connemara. 

As I was going across the sandhills one dun- 
sailed hooker glided slowly out to begin her 
voyage, and another beat up to the pier. 
Troops of red cattle, driven mostly by the wo- 
men, were coming up from several directions, 
forming, with the green of the long tract of 
grass that separates the sea from the rocks, 
a new unity of colour. 

The pier itself was crowded with bullocks 
and a great number of the people. I noticed 
one extraordinary girl in the throng who 
seemed to exert an authority on all who came 
near her. Her curiously-formed nostrils and 
narrow chin gave her a witch-like expression, 
yet the beauty of her hair and skin made her 
singularly attractive. 

When the empty hooker was made fast its 
deck was still many feet below the level of the 
pier, so the animals were slung down by a 
rope from the mast-head, with much strug- 
gling and confusion. Some of them made 
wild efforts to escape, nearly carrying their 

53 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

owners with them into the sea, but they were 
handled with wonderful dexterity, and there 
was no mishap. 

When the open hold was filled with young 
cattle, packed as tightly as they could stand, 
the owners with their wives or sisters, who go 
with them to prevent extravagance in Galway, 
jumped down on the deck, and the voyage was 
begun. Immediately afterwards a rickety old 
hooker beat up with turf from Connemara, 
and while she was unlading all the men sat 
along the edge of the pier and made remarks 
upon the rottenness of her timber till the 
owners grew wild with rage. 

The tide was now too low for more boats 
to come to the pier, so a move was made to a 
strip of sand towards the south-east, where 
the rest of the cattle were shipped through the 
surf. Here the hooker was anchored about 
eighty yards from the shore, and a curagh 
was rowed round to tow out the animals. Each 
bullock was caught in its turn and girded with 
a sling of rope by which it could be hoisted on 
board. Another rope was fastened to the 
horns and passed out to a man in the stern of 
the curagh. Then the animal was forced down 
through the surf and out of its depth before 
it had much time to struggle. Once fairly 
swimming, it was towed out to the hooker and 
dragged on board in a half -drowned condition. 

The freedom of the sand seemed to give a 
stronger spirit of revolt, and some of the 
animals were only caught after a dangerous 
struggle. The first attempt was not always 

54 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

successful, and I saw one three-year-old lift 
two men with his horns, and drag another 
fifty yards along the sand by his tail before 
he was subdued. 

While this work was going on a crowd of 
girls and women collected on the edge of the 
cliff and kept shouting down a confused babble 
of satire and praise. 

When I came back to the cottage I found 
that among the women who had gone to the 
mainland was a daughter of the old woman's, 
and that her baby of about nine months had 
been left in the care of its grandmother. 

As I came in she was busy getting ready 
my dinner, and old Pat Dirane, who usually 
comes at this hour, was rocking the cradle. It 
is made of clumsy wicker-work, with two 
pieces of rough wood fastened underneath to 
serve as rockers, and all the time I am in my 
room I can hear it bumping on the floor with 
extraordinary violence. When the baby is 
awake it sprawls on the floor, and the old 
woman sings it a variety of inarticulate lull- 
abies that have much musical charm. 

Another daughter, who lives at home, has 
gone to the fair also, so the old woman has 
both the baby and myself to take care of as 
well as a crowd of chickens that live in a 
hole beside the fire. Often when I want tea, 
or when the old woman goes for water, I have 
to take my own turn at rocking the cradle. 

One of the largest Duns, or pagan forts, 
on the islands, is within a stone's throw of my 

55 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

cottage, and I often stroll up there after a 
dinner of eggs or salt pork, to smoke drowsily 
on the stones. The neighbours know my habit, 
and not infrequently some one wanders up to 
ask what news there is in the last paper I have 
received, or to make inquiries about the Am- 
erican war. If no one comes I prop my book 
open with stones touched by the Fir-bolgs, and 
sleep for hours in the delicious warmth of the 
sun. The last few days I have almost lived on 
the round walls, for, by some miscalculation, 
our turf has come to an end, and the fires are 
kept up with dried cow-dung — a common fuel 
on the island — the smoke from which filters 
through into my room and lies in blue layers 
above my table and bed. 

Fortunately the weather is fine, and I can 
spend my days in the sunshine. When I look 
round from the top of these walls I can see 
the sea on nearly every side, stretching away 
to distant ranges of mountains on the north 
and south. Underneath me to the east there 
is the one inhabited district of the island, where 
I can see red figures moving about the cottages, 
sending up an occasional fragment of con- 
versation or of old island melodies. 

The baby is teething, and has been crying 
for several days. Since his mother went to 
the fair they have been feeding him with 
cow's milk, often slightly sour, and giving him, 
I think, more than he requires. 

This morning, however, he seemed so unwell 
they sent out to look for a foster-mother in 

56 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the village, and before long a young woman, 
who lives a little way to the east, came in and 
restored him his natural food. 

A few hours later, when I came into the 
kitchen to talk to old Pat, another woman per- 
formed the same kindly office, this time a 
person with a curiously whimsical expression. 

Pat told me a story of an unfaithful wife, 
which I will give further down, and then broke 
into a moral dispute with the visitor, which 
caused immense delight to some young men 
who had come down to listen to the story. 
Unfortunately it was carried on so rapidly in 
Gaelic that I lost most of the points. 

This old man talks usually in a mournful 
tone about his ill-health, and his death, which 
he feels to be approaching, yet he has occas- 
ional touches of humor that remind me of old 
Mourteen on the north island. To-day a 
grotesque twopenny doll was lying on the floor 
near the old woman. He picked it up and ex- 
amined it as if comparing it with her. Then 
he held it up : ' Is it you is after bringing that 
thing into the world,' he said, * woman of the 
house ? ' 

Here is the story : — 

One day I was travelling on foot from Gal- 
way to Dublin, and the darkness came on me 
and I ten miles from the town I was wanting 
to pass the night in. Then a hard rain began 
to fall and I was tired walking, so when I saw 
a sort of a house with no roof on it up against 

57 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the road, I got in the way the walls would 
give me shelter. 

As I was looking round I saw a light in 
some trees two perches off, and thinking any 
sort of a house would be better than where I 
was, I got over a wall and went up to the 
house to look in at the window. 

I saw a dead man laid on a table, and candles 
lighted, and a woman watching him. I was 
frightened when I saw him, but it was raining 
hard, and I said to myself, if he was dead he 
couldn't hurt me. Then I knocked on the door 
and the woman came and opened it. 

* Good evening, ma'am,' says I. 

* Good evening kindly, stranger,' says she. 
* Come in out of the rain.' 

Then she took me in and told me her hus- 
band was after dying on her, and she was 
watching him that night. 

* But it's thirsty you'll be, stranger,' says 
she. ' Come into the parlour.' 

Then she took me into the parlour — and it 
was a fine clean house — and she put a cup, 
with a saucer under it, on the table before me 
with fine sugar and bread. 

When I'd had a cup of tea I went back into 
the kitchen where the dead man was lying, 
and she gave me a fine new pipe off the table 
with a drop of spirits. 

' Stranger,' says she, ' would you be afeard 
to be alone with himself ? ' 

* Not a bit in the world, ma'am,' says I ; * he 
that's dead can do no hurt.' 

Then she said she wanted to go over and 

58 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

tell the neighbours the way her husband was 
after dying on her, and she went out and 
locked the door behind her. 

I smoked one pipe, and I leaned out and took 
another off the table. I was smoking it with 
my hand on the back of my chair — the way 
you are yourself this minute, God bless you — 
and I looking on the dead man, when he 
opened his eyes as wide as myself and looked 
at me. 

' Don't be afraid, stranger,' said the dead 
man; ' I'm not dead at all in the world. Come 
here and help me up and I'll tell you all about 
it' 

Well, I went up and took the sheet off of 
him, and I saw that he had a fine clean shirt 
on his body, and fine flannel drawers. 

He sat up then, and says he — 

* I've got a bad wife, stranger, and I let on 
to be dead the way I'd catch her goings on.' 

Then he got two fine sticks he had to keep 
down his wife, and he put them at each side 
of his body, and he laid himself out again as 
if he was dead. 

In half an hour his wife came back and a 
young man along with her. Well, she gave 
him his tea, and she told him he was tired, and 
he would do right to go and lie down in the 
bedroom. 

The young man went in and the woman sat 
down to watch by the dead man. A while 
after she got up and ' Stranger,' says she, * I'm 
going in to get the candle out of the room; 
I 'm thinking the young man will be asleep by 

59 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

this time.' She went into the bedroom, but 
the divil a bit of her came back. 

Then the dead man got up, and he took one 
stick, and he gave the other to myself. We 
went in and saw them lying together with her 
head on his arm. 

The dead man hit him a blow with the stick 
so that the blood out of him leapt up and hit 
the gallery. 

That is my story. 

In stories of this kind he always speaks in 
the first person, with minute details to show 
that he was actually present at the scenes that 
are described. 

At the beginning of this story he gave me 
a long account of what had made him be on 
his way to Dublin on that occasion, and told 
me about all the rich people he was going to 
see in the finest streets of the city. 

A week of sweeping fogs has passed over 
and given me a strange sense of exile and 
desolation. I walk round the island nearly 
every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere 
but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and 
then a tumult of waves. 

The slaty limestone has grown black with 
the water that is dripping on it, and wherever 
I turn there is the same grey obsession twining 
and wreathing itself among the narrow fields, 
and the same wail from the wind that shrieks 
and whistles in the loose rubble of the walls. 

At first the people do not give much atten- 
60 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

tion to the wilderness that is round them, but 
after a few days their voices sink in the 
kitchen, and their endless talk of pigs and 
cattle falls to the whisper of men who are 
telling stories in a haunted house. 

The rain continues ; but this evening a num- 
ber of young men were in the kitchen mending 
nets, and the bottle of poteen was drawn from 
its hiding-place. 

One cannot think of these people drinking 
wine on the summit of this crumbling preci- 
pice, but their grey poteen, which brings a 
shock of joy to the blood, seems predestined 
to keep sanity in men who live forgotten in 
these worlds of mist. 

I sat in the kitchen part of the evening to 
feel the gaiety that was rising, and when I 
came into my own room after dark, one of the 
sons came in every time the bottle made its 
round, to pour me out my share. 

It has cleared, and the sun is shining with 
a luminous warmth that makes the whole 
island glisten with the splendor of a gem, and 
fills the sea and sky with a radiance of blue 
light. 

I have come out to lie on the rocks where 
I have the black edge of the north island in 
front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to 
look at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, 
a perpendicular cliff under my ankles, and over 
me innumerable gulls that chase each other 
in a white cirrus of wings. 
6i 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

A nest of hooded crows is somewhere near 
me, and one of the old birds is trying to drive 
me away by letting itself fall like a stone every 
few moments, from about forty yards above 
me to within reach of my hand. 

Gannets are passing up and down above the 
sound, swooping at times after a mackerel, 
and further off I can see the whole fleet of 
hookers coming out from Kilronan for a 
night's fishing in the deep water to the west. 

As I lie here hour after hour, I seem to enter 
into the wild pastimes of the cliff, and to be- 
come a companion of the cormorants and 
crows. 

Many of the birds display themselves before 
me with the vanity of barbarians, performing 
in strange evolutions as long as I am in sight, 
and returning to their ledge of rock when I 
am gone. Some are wonderfully expert, and 
cut graceful figures for an inconceivable time 
without a flap of their wings, growing so 
absorbed in their own dexterity that they often 
collide with one another in their flight, an 
incident always followed by a wild outburst 
of abuse. Their language is easier than Gaelic, 
and I seem to understand the greater part of 
their cries, though I am not able to answer. 
There is one plaintive note which they take 
up in the middle of their usual babble with 
extraordinary effect, and pass on from one to 
another along the cliff with a sort of an in- 
articulate wail, as if they remembered for an 
instant the horror of the mist. 

On the low sheets of rock to the east I can 
62 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

see a number of red and grey figures hurrying 
about their work. The continual passing in 
this island between the misery of last night and 
the splendor of to-day, seems to create an 
affinity between the moods of these people and 
the moods of varying rapture and dismay that 
are frequent in artists, and in certain forms of 
alienation. Yet it is only in the intonation of 
a few sentences or some old fragment of 
melody that I catch the real spirit of the island, 
for in general the men sit together and talk 
with endless iteration of the tides and fish, and 
of the price of kelp in Connemara. 

After Mass this morning an old woman was 
buried. She lived in the cottage next mine, 
and more than once before noon I heard a 
faint echo of the keen. I did not go to the 
wake for fear my presence might jar upon 
the mourners, but all last evening I could hear 
the strokes of a hammer in the yard, where, 
in the middle of a little crowd of idlers, the 
next of kin laboured slowly at the coffin. 
To-day, before the hour for the funeral, poteen 
was served to a number of men who stood 
about upon the road, and a portion was 
brought to me in my room. Then the coffin 
was carried out sewn loosely in sailcloth, and 
held near the ground by three cross-poles 
lashed upon the top. As we moved down to 
the low eastern portion of the island, nearly 
all the men, and all the oldest women, wearing 
petticoats over their heads, came out and 
joined in the procession. 

63 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

While the grave was being opened the 
women sat down among the flat tombstones, 
bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, 
and began the wild keen, or crying for the 
dead. Each old woman, as she took her turn 
in the leading recitative, seemed possessed for 
the moment with a profound ecstasy of grief, 
swaying to and fro, and bending her forehead 
to the stone before her, while she called out 
to the dead with a perpetually recurring chant 
of sobs. 

All round the graveyard other wrinkled 
women, looking out from under the deep red 
petticoats that cloaked them, rocked themselves 
with the same rhythm, and intoned the inartic- 
ulate chant that is sustained by all as an 
accompaniment. 

The morning had been beautifully fine, but 
as they lowered the coffin into the grave, 
thunder rumbled overhead and hailstones 
hissed among the bracken. 

In Inishmaan one is forced to believe in a 
sympathy between man and nature, and at 
this moment when the thunder sounded a 
death-peal of extraordinary grandeur above 
the voices of the women, I could see the faces 
near me stiff and drawn with emotion. 

When the coffin was in the grave, and the 
thunder had rolled away across the hills of 
Clare, the keen broke out again more passion- 
ately than before. 

This grief of the keen is no personal com- 
plaint for the death of one woman over eighty 
years, but seems to contain the whole 

64 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every 
native of the island. In this cry of pain the 
inner consciousness of the people seems to lay 
itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the 
mood of beings who feel their isolation in the 
face of a universe that wars on them with 
winds and seas. They are usually silent, but 
in the presence of death all outward show of 
indifference or patience is forgotten, and they 
shriek with pitiable despair before the horror 
of the fate to which they all are doomed. 

Before they covered the coffin an old man 
kneeled down by the grave and repeated a 
simple prayer for the dead. 

There was an irony in these words of atone- 
ment and Catholic belief spoken by voices that 
were still hoarse with the cries of pagan 
desperation. 

A little beyond the grave I saw a line of 
old women who had recited in the keen sitting 
in the shadow of a wall beside the roofless 
shell of the church. They were still sobbing 
and shaken with grief, yet they were be- 
ginning to talk again of the daily trifles that 
veil from them the terror of the world. 

When we had all come out of the grave- 
yard, and two men had rebuilt the hole in 
the wall through which the coffin had been 
carried in, we walked back to the village, 
talking of anything, and joking of anything, 
as if merely coming from the boat-slip, or 
the pier. 

One man told me of the poteen drinking 
that takes place at some funerals. 

65 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* A while since/ he said, * there were two 
men fell down in the graveyard while the 
drink was on them. The sea was rough that 
day, the way no one could go to bring the 
doctor, and one of the men never woke again, 
and found death that night.' 

The other day the men of this house made 
a new field. There was a slight bank of 
earth under the wall of the yard, and another 
in the corner of the cabbage garden. The 
old man and his eldest son dug out the clay, 
with the care of men working in a gold-mine, 
and Michael packed it in panniers — there are 
no wheeled vehicles on this island — for trans- 
port to a flat rock in a sheltered corner of 
their holding, where it was mixed with sand 
and seaweed and spread out in a layer upon 
the stone. 

Most of the potato-growing of the island 
is carried on in fields of this sort — for which 
the people pay a considerable rent — and if the 
season is at all dry, their hope of a fair crop 
is nearly always disappointed. 

It is now nine days since rain has fallen, and 
the people are filled with anxiety, although 
the sun has not yet been hot enough to do 
harm. 

The drought is also causing a scarcity of 
water. There are a few springs on this side 
of the island, but they come only from a little 
distance, and in hot weather are not to be 
relied on. The supply for this house is carried 
up in a water-barrel by one of the women. 

66 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

If it is drawn off at once it is not very- 
nauseous, but if it has lain, as it often does, 
for some hours in the barrel, the smell, colour, 
and taste are unendurable. The water for 
washing is also coming short, and as I walk 
round the edges of the sea, I often come on a 
girl with her petticoats tucked up round her, 
standing in a pool left by the tide and washing 
her flannels among the sea-anemones and crabs. 
Their red bodices and white tapering legs 
make them as beautiful as tropical sea-birds, 
as they stand in a frame of seaweeds against 
the brink of the Atlantic. Michael, however, 
is a little uneasy when they are in sight, and I 
cannot pause to watch them. This habit of 
using the sea water for washing causes a good 
deal of rheumatism on the island, for the salt 
lies in the clothes and keeps them continually 
moist. 

The people have taken advantage of this dry 
moment to begin the burning of the kelp, and 
all the islands are lying in a volume of grey 
smoke. There will not be a very large 
quantity this year, as the people are dis- 
couraged by the uncertainty of the market, and 
do not care to undertake the task of manu- 
facture without a certainty of profit. 

The work needed to form a ton of kelp is 
considerable. The seaweed is collected from 
the rocks after the storms of autumn and 
winter, dried on fine days, and then made up 
into a rick, where it is left till the beginning 
of June. 

It is then burnt in low kilns on the shore, 

67 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

an affair that takes from twelve to twenty- 
four hours of continuous hard work, though 
I understand the people here do not manage 
well and spoil a portion of what they produce 
by burning it more than is required. 

The kiln holds about two tons of molten 
kelp, and when full it is loosely covered with 
stones, and left to cool. In a few days the 
substance is as hard as the limestone, and has 
to be broken with crowbars before it can be 
placed in cura^hs for transport to Kilronan, 
where it is tested to determine the amount of 
iodine in contained, and paid for accordingly. 
In former years good kelp would bring seven 
pounds a ton, now four pounds are not always 
reached. 

In Aran even manufacture is of interest. 
The low flame-edged kiln, sending out dense 
clouds of creamy smoke, with a band of red 
and grey clothed workers moving in the haze, 
and usually some petticoated boys and women 
who come down with drink, forms a scene 
with as much variety and colour as any picture 
from the East. 

The men feel in a certain sense the distinc- 
tion of their island, and show me their work 
with pride. One of them said to me yesterday, 
* I'm thinking you never saw the like of this 
work before this day ? ' 

* That is true,' I answered, ' I never did.' 

* Bedad, then,' he said, * isn't it a great 
wonder that you've seen France and Germany, 
and the Holy Father, and never seen a man 
making kelp till you come to Inishmaan.' 

68 




Kelp Making 



1 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

All the horses from this island are put out 
on grass among the hills of Connemara from 
June to the end of September, as there is no 
grazing here during the summer. 

Their shipping and transport is even more 
difficult than that of the horned cattle. Most 
of them are wild Connemara ponies, and their 
great strength and timidity make them hard 
to handle on the narrow pier, while in the 
hooker itself it is not easy to get them safely 
on their feet in the small space that is available. 
They are dealt with in the same way as for 
the bullocks I have spoken of already, but 
the excitement becomes much more intense, 
and the storm of Gaelic that rises the moment 
a horse is shoved from the pier, till it is safely 
in its place, is indescribable. Twenty boys and 
men howl and scream with agitation, cursing 
and exhorting, without knowing, most of the. 
time, what they are saying. 

Apart, however, from this primitive babble^ 
the dexterity and power of the men are dis- 
played to more advantage than in anything 
I have seen hitherto. I noticed particularly 
the owner of a hooker from the north island 
that was loaded this morning. He seemed 
able to hold up a horse by his single weight 
when it was swinging from the masthead, and 
preserved a humorous calm even in moments 
of the wildest excitement. Sometimes a large 
mare would come down sideways on the backs 
of the other horses, and kick there till the hold 
seemed to be filled with a mass of struggling 
centaurs, for the men themselves often leap 

71 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

down to try and save the foals from injury. 
The backs of the horses put in first are often 
a good deal cut by the shoes of the others that 
arrive on top of them, but otherwise they do 
not seem to be much the worse, and as they are 
not on their way to a fair, it is not of much 
consequence in what condition they come to 
land. 

There is only one bit and saddle in the 
island, which are used by the priest, who rides 
from the chapel to the pier when he has held 
the service on Sunday. 

The islanders themselves ride with a simple 
halter and a stick, yet sometimes travel, at least 
in the larger island, at a desperate gallop. As 
the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits 
sideways over the withers, and if the panniers 
are empty they go at full speed in this position 
without anything to hold to. 

More than once in Aranmor I met a party 
going out west with empty panniers from Kil- 
ronan. Long before they came in sight I 
could hear a clatter of hoofs, and then a whirl 
of horses would come round a corner at full 
gallop with their heads out, utterly indifferent 
to the slender halter that is their only check. 
They generally travel in single file with a few 
yards between them, and as there is no traffic 
there is little fear of an accident. 

Sometimes a woman and a man ride 
together, but in this case the man sits in the 
usual position, and the woman sits sideways 
behind him, and holds him round the waist. 

72 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Old Pat Dirane continues to come up every 
day to talk to me, and at times I turn the 
conversation to his experiences of the fairies. 

He has seen a good many of them, he says, 
in different parts of the island, especially in 
the sandy districts north of the slip. They are 
about a yard high with caps like the ' peelers ' 
pulled down over their faces. On one occasion 
he saw them playing ball in the evening just 
above the slip, and he says I must avoid that 
place in the morning or after nightfall for fear 
they might do me mischief. 

He has seen two women who were ' away ' 
with them, one a young married woman, the 
other a girl. The woman was standing by a 
wall, at a spot he described to me with great 
care, looking out towards the north. 

Another night he heard a voice crying out 
in Irish, ' mhathair ta me marbh ' (' O mother, 
I'm killed'), and in the morning there was 
blood on the wall of his house, and a child 
in a house not far off was dead. 

Yesterday he took me aside, and said he 
would tell me a secret he had never yet told 
to any person in the world. 

* Take a sharp needle,' he said, ' and stick 
it in under the collar of your coat, and not 
one of them will be able to have power on you.' 

Iron is a common talisman with barbarians, 
but in this case the idea of exquisite sharpness 
was probably present also, and, perhaps, some 
feeling for the sanctity of the instrument of 
toil, a folk-belief that is common in Brittany. 

The fairies are more numerous in Mayo 

73 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

than in any other county, though they are 
fond of certain districts in Gal way, where the 
following story is said to have taken place. 

* A farmer was in great distress as his crops 
had failed, and his cow had died on him. One 
night he told his wife to make him a fine new 
sack for flour before the next morning; and 
when it was finished he started off with it 
before the dawn. 

* At that time there was a gentleman who 
had been taken by the fairies, and made an 
officer among them, and it was often people 
would see him and her riding on a white horse 
at dawn and in the evening. 

* The poor man went down to the place 
where they used to see the officer, and when 
he came by on his horse, he asked the loan of 
two hundred and a half of flour, for he was 
in great want. 

* The officer called the fairies out of a hole 
in the rocks where they stored their wheat, and 
told them to give the poor man what he was 
asking. Then he told him to come back and 
pay him in a year, and rode away. 

' When the poor man got home he wrote 
down the day on a piece of paper, and that 
day year he came back and paid the officer.' 

When he had ended his story the old man 
told me that the fairies have a tenth of all the 
produce of the country, and make stores of it 
in the rocks. 

It is a Holy Day, and I have come up to sit 
on the Dun while the people are at Mass. 

74 



I 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

A strange tranquility has come over the 
island this morning, as happens sometimes on 
Sunday, filling the two circles of sea and sky 
with the quiet of a church. 

The one landscape that is here lends itself 
with singular power to this suggestion of grey 
luminous cloud. There is no wind, and no 
definite light. Aranmor seems to sleep upon 
a mirror, and the hills of Connemara look so 
near that I am troubled by the width of the 
bay that lies before them, touched this morn- 
ing with individual expression one sees 
sometimes in a lake. 

On these rocks, where there is no growth 
of vegetable or animal life, all the seasons are 
the same, and this June day is so full of 
autumn that I listen unconsciously for the 
rustle of dead leaves. 

The first group of men are coming out of 
the chapel, followed by a crowd of women, 
who divide at the gate and troop off in dif- 
ferent directions, while the men linger on the 
road to gossip. 

The silence is broken; I can hear far off, 
as if over water, a faint murmur of Gaelic. 

In the afternoon the sun came out and I was 
rowed over for a visit to Kilronan. 

As my men were bringing round the curagh 
to take me off a headland near the pier, they 
struck a sunken rock, and came ashore ship- 
ping a quantity of water. They plugged the 
hole with a piece of sacking torn from a bag 
of potatoes they were taking over for the 

75 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

priest, and we set off with nothing but a piece 
of torn canvas between us and the Atlantic. 

Every few hundred yards one of the rowers 
had to stop and bail, but the hole did not 
increase. 

When we were about half way across the 
sound we met a curagh coming towards us 
with its sails set. After some shouting in 
Gaelic, I learned that they had a packet of 
letters and tobacco for myself. We sidled up 
as near as was possible with the roll, and my 
goods were thrown to me wet with spray. 

After my weeks in Inishmaan, Kilronan 
seemed an imposing centre of activity. The 
half-civilised fishermen of the larger island 
are inclined to despise the simplicity of the 
life here, and some of them who were standing 
about when I landed asked me how at all I 
passed my time with no decent fishing to be 
looking at. 

I turned in for a moment to talk to the old 
couple in the hotel, and then moved on to pay 
some other visits in the village. 

Later in the evening I walked out along the 
northern road, where I met many of the 
natives of the outlying villages, who had come 
down to Kilronan for the Holy Day, and were 
now wandering home in scattered groups. 

The women and girls, when they had no 
men with them, usually tried to make fun with 
me. 

* Is it tired you are, stranger ? ' said one 
girl. I was walking very slowly, to pass the 
time before my return to the east. 

76 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* Bedad, it is not, little girl,' I answered in 
Gaelic, ' It is lonely I am.' 

* Here is my little sister, stranger, who will 
give you her arm.' 

And so it went. Quiet as these women are 
on ordinary occasions, when two or three of 
them are gathered together in their holiday 
petticoats and shawls, they are as wild and 
capricious as the women who live in towns. 

About seven o'clock I got back to Kilronan, 
and beat up my crew from the public-houses 
near the bay. With their usual carelessness 
they had not seen to the leak in the curagh, nor 
to an oar that was losing the brace that holds 
it to the toll-pin, and we moved off across the 
sound at an absurd pace with a deepening pool 
at our feet. 

A superb evening light was lying over the 
island, which made me rejoice at our delay. 
Looking back there was a golden haze behind 
the sharp edges of the rock, and a long wake 
from the sun, which was making jewels of the 
bubbling left by the oars. 

The men had had their share of porter and 
were unusually voluble, pointing out things 
to me that I had already seen, and stopping 
now and then to make me notice the oily smell 
of mackerel that was rising from the waves. 

They told me that an evicting party is 
coming to the island to-morrow morning, and 
gave me a long account of what they make 
and spend in a year, and of their trouble with 
the rent. 

* The rent is hard enough for a poor man/ 

77 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

said one of them, * but this time we didn't pay, 
and they're after serving processes on every 
one of us. A man will have to pay his rent 
now, and a power of money with it for the 
process, and I' m thinking the agent will have 
money enough out of them processes to pay 
for his servant-girl and his man all the year.' 

I asked afterwards who the island belonged 
to. 

* Bedad,' they said, ' we've always heard it 
belonged to Miss , and she is dead.' 

When the sun passed like a lozenge of gold 
flame into the sea the cold became intense. 
Then the men began to talk among themselves, 
and losing the thread, I lay half in a dream 
looking at the pale oily sea about us, and the 
low cliffs of the island sloping up past the 
village with its wreath of smoke to the outline 
of Dun Conor. 

Old Pat was in the house when I arrived, 
and he told a long story after supper: — 

There was once a widow living among the 
woods, and her only son living along with 
her. He went out every morning through the 
trees to get sticks, and one day as he was lying 
on the ground he saw a swarm of flies flying 
over what the cow leaves behind her. He 
took up his sickle and hit one blow at them, 
and hit that hard he left no single one of them 
living. 

That evening he said to his mother that it 
was time he was going out into the world to 
seek his fortune, for he was able to destroy a 

78 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

whole swarm of flies at one blow, and he 
asked her to make him three cakes the way 
he might take them with him in the morning. 

He started the next day a while after the 
dawn, with his three cakes in his wallet, and 
he ate one of them near ten o'clock. 

He got hungry again by midday and ate the 
second, and when night was coming on him 
he ate the third. After that he met a man on 
the road who asked him where he was going. 

* I'm looking for some place where I can 
work for my living,' said the young man. 

' Come with me,' said the other man, * and 
sleep to-night in the barn, and I '11 give you 
work to-morrow to see what you 're able for.' 

The next morning the farmer brought him 
out and showed him his cows and told him 
to take them out to graze on the hills, and to 
keep good watch that no one should come 
near them to milk them. The young man 
drove out the cows into the fields, and when 
the heat of the day came on he lay down on 
his back and looked up into the sky. A while 
after he saw a black spot in the north-west, 
and it grew larger and nearer till he saw a 
great giant coming towards him. 

He got up on to his feet and he caught the 
giant round the legs with his two arms, and 
he drove him down into the hard ground 
above his ankles, the way he was not able to 
free himself. Then the giant told him to do 
him no hurt, and gave him his magic rod, and 
told him to strike on the rock, and he would 

79 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

find his beautiful black horse, and his sword, 
and his fine suit. 

The young man struck the rock and it 
opened before him, and he found the beautiful 
black horse, and the giant's sword and the suit 
lying before him. He took out the sword 
alone, and he struck one blow with it and 
struck off the giant's head. Then he put back 
the sword into the rock, and went out again 
to his cattle, till it was time to drive them 
home to the farmer. 

When they came to milk the cows they 
found a power of milk in them, and the farmer 
asked the young man if he had seen nothing 
out on the hills, for the other cow-boys had 
been bringing home the cows with no drop of 
milk in them. And the young man said he had 
seen nothing. 

The next day he went out again with the 
cows. He lay down on his back in the heat 
of the day, and after a while he saw a black 
spot in the north-west, and it grew larger and 
nearer, till he saw it was a great giant coming 
to attack him. 

' You killed my brother,' said the giant ; 
* come here, till I make a garter of your body.' 

The young man went to him and caught 
him by the legs and drove him down into the 
hard ground up to his ankles. 

Then he hit the rod against the rock, and 
took out the sword and struck off the giant's 
head. 

That evening the farmer found twice as 
much milk in the cows as the evening before, 

80 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and he asked the young man if he had seen 
anything. The young man said that he had 
seen nothing. 

The third day the third giant came to him 
and said, ' You have killed my two brothers ; 
come here, till I make a garter of your body.' 

And he did with this giant as he had done 
with the other two, and that evening there was 
so much milk in the cows it was dropping out 
of their udders on the pathway. 

The next day the farmer called him and 
told him he might leave the cows in the stalls 
that day, for there was a great curiosity to be 
seen, namely, a beautiful king's daughter that 
was to be eaten by a great fish, if there was 
no one in it that could save her. But the young 
man said such a sight was all one to him, 
and he went out with the cows on to the hills. 
When he came to the rocks he hit them with 
his rod and brought out the suit and put it 
on him, and brought out the sword and 
strapped it on his side, like an officer, and he 
got on the black horse and rode faster than 
the wind till he came to where the beautiful 
king's daughter was sitting on the shore in a 
golden chair, waiting for the great fish. 

When the great fish came in on the sea, 
bigger than a whale, with two wings on the 
back of it, the young man went down into the 
surf and struck at it with his sword and cut 
off one of its wings. All the sea turned red 
with the bleeding out of it, till it swam away 
and left the young man on the shore. 

Then he turned his horse and rode faster 
8i 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

than the wind till he came to the rocks, and he 
took the suit off him and put it back in the 
rocks, with the giant's sword and the black 
horse, and drove the cows down to the farm. 

The man came out before him and said he 
had missed the greatest wonder ever was, and 
that a noble person was after coming down 
with a fine suit on him and cutting off one of 
the wings from the great fish. 

' And there '11 be the same necessity on her 
for two mornings more,' said the farmer, * and 
you 'd do right to come and look on it.' 

But the young man said he would not come. 

The next morning he went out with his 
cows, and he took the sword and the suit and 
the black horse out of the rock, and he rode 
faster than the wind till he came where the 
king's daughter was sitting on the shore. 
When the people saw him coming there was 
great wonder on them to know if it was the 
same man they had seen the day before. The 
king's daughter called out to him to come and 
kneel before her, and when he kneeled down 
she took her scissors and cut off a lock of hair 
from the back of his head and hid it in her 
clothes. 

Then the great worm came in from the sea, 
and he went down into the surf and cut the 
other wing off from it. All the sea turned 
red with the bleeding out of it, till it swam 
away and left them. 

That evening the farmer came out before 
him and told him of the great wonder he had 

82 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

missed, and asked him would he go the next 
day and look on it. The young man said he 
would not go. 

The third day he came again on the black 
horse to where the king's daughter was sit- 
ting on a golden chair waiting for the great 
worm. When it came in from the sea the 
young man went down before it, and every 
time it opened its mouth to eat him, he struck 
into its mouth, till his sword went out through 
its neck, and it rolled back and died. 

Then he rode off faster than the wind, and 
he put the suit and the sword and the black 
horse into the rock, and drove home the cows. 

The farmer was there before him and 
he told him that there was to be a great 
marriage feast held for three days, and on 
the third day the king's daughter would be 
married to the man that killed the great worm, 
if they were able to find him. 

A great feast was held, and men of great 
strength came and said it was themselves were 
after killing the great worm. 

But on the third day the young man put on 
the suit, and strapped the sword to his side 
like an officer, and got on the black horse and 
rode faster than the wind, till he came to the 
palace. 

The King's daughter saw him, and she 
brought him in and made him kneel down be- 
fore her. Then she looked at the back of his 
head and she saw the place where she had cut 
off the lock with her own hand. She led him 

83 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

in to the king, and they were married, and the 
young man was given all the estate. 
That is my story. 

Two recent attempts to carry out evictions 
on the island came to nothing, for each time 
a sudden storm rose, by, it is said, the 
power of a native witch, when the steamer was 
approaching, and made it impossible to land. 

This morning, however, broke beneath a 
clear sky of June, and when I came into the 
open air the sea and rocks were shining with 
wonderful brilliancy. Groups of men, dressed 
in their holiday clothes, were standing about, 
talking with anger and fear, yet showing a 
lurking satisfaction at the thought of the 
dramatic pageant that was to break the silence 
of the seas. 

About half -past nine the steamer came in 
sight, on the narrow line of sea-horizon that 
is seen in the centre of the bay, and immediate- 
ly a last effort was made to hide the cows and 
sheep of the families that were most in debt. 

Till this year no one on the island would con- 
sent to act as bailiff, so that it was impossible 
to identify the cattle of the defaulters. Now, 
however, a man of the name of Patrick has 
sold his honour, and the effort of concealment 
is practically futile. 

This falling away from the ancient loyalty 
of the island has caused intense indignation, 
and early yesterday morning, while I was 
dreaming on the Dun, this letter was nailed on 
the doorpost of the chapel: — 

84 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* Patrick, the devil, a revolver is waiting for 
you. If you are missed with the first shot, 
there will be five more that will hit you. 

* Any man that will talk with you, or work 
with you, or drink a pint of porter in your 
shop, will be done with the same way as your- 
self.' 

As the steamer drew near I moved down 
with the men to watch the arrival, though no 
one went further than about a mile from the 
shore. 

Two curaghs from Kilronan with a man 
who was to give help in identifying the cot- 
tages, the doctor, and the relieving officer, 
were drifting with the tide, unwilling to come 
to land without the support of the larger party. 
When the anchor had been thrown it gave me 
a strange throb of pain to see the boats being 
lowered, and the sunshine gleaming on the 
rifles and helmets of the constabulary who 
crowded into them. 

Once on shore the men were formed in 
close marching order, a word was given, and 
the heavy rhythm of their boots came up over 
the rocks. We were collected in two straggling 
bands on either side of the roadway, and a few 
moments later the body of magnificent armed 
men passed close to us, followed by a low 
rabble, who had been brought to act as drivers 
for the sheriff. 

After my weeks spent among primitive men 
this glimpse of the newer types of humanity 
was not reassuring. Yet these mechanical 
police, with the commonplace agents and 

8s 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

sheriffs, and the rabble they had hired, repre- 
sented aptly enough the civilisation for which 
the homes of the island were to be desecrated. 

A stop was made at one of the first cottages 
in the village, and the day's work began. 
Here, however, and at the next cottage, a com- 
promise was made, as some relatives came up 
at the last moment and lent the money that was 
needed to gain a respite. 

In another case a girl was ill in the house,, 
so the doctor interposed, and the people were 
allowed to remain after a merely formal evic- 
tion. About midday, however, a house was 
reached where there was no pretext for mercy^ 
and no money could be procured. At a sign 
from the sheriff the work of carrying out the 
beds and utensils was begun in the middle of 
a crowd of natives who looked on in absolute 
silence, broken only by the wild imprecations 
of the woman of the house. She belonged to 
one of the most primitive families on the 
island, and she shook with uncontrollable fury 
as she saw the strange armed men who spoke 
a language she could not understand driving 
her from the hearth she had brooded on for 
thirty years. For these people the outrage to 
the hearth is the supreme catastrophe. They 
live here in a world of grey, where there are 
wild rains and mists every week in the year,, 
and their warm chimney corners, filled with 
children and young girls, grow into the con- 
sciousness of each family in a way it is not 
easy to understand in more civilised places. 

The outrage to a tomb in China probably 

86 




The Evictions 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

gives no greater shock to the Chinese than the 
outrage to a hearth in Inishmaan gives to the 
people. 

When the few trifles had been carried out, 
and the door blocked with stones, the old 
woman sat down by the threshold and covered 
her head with her shawl. 

Five or six other women who lived close by- 
sat down in a circle round her, with mute sym- 
pathy. Then the crowd moved on with the 
police to another cottage where the same scene 
was to take place, and left the group of deso- 
late women sitting by the hovel. 

There were still no clouds in the sky, and 
the heat was intense. The police when not in 
motion lay sweating and gasping under the 
walls with their tunics unbuttoned. They were 
not attractive, and I kept comparing them with 
the islandmen, who walked up and down as 
cool and fresh-looking as the sea-gulls. 

When the last eviction had been carried out 
a division was made: half the party went off 
with the bailiff to search the inner plain of the 
island for the cattle that had been hidden in 
the morning, the other half remained on the 
village road to guard some pigs that had al- 
ready been taken possession of. 

After a while two of these pigs escaped 
from the drivers and began a wild race up and 
down the narrow road. The people shrieked 
and howled to increase their terror, and at 
last some of them became so excited that the 
police thought it time to interfere. They drew 
up in double line opposite the mouth of a blind 

89 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

laneway where the animals had been shut up. 
A moment later the shrieking began again in 
the west and the two pigs came in sight, 
rushing down the middle of the road with the 
drivers behind them. 

They reached the line of the police. There 
was a slight scufflle, and then the pigs con- 
tinued their mad rush to the east, leaving three 
policemen lying in the dust. 

The satisfaction of the people was immense. 
They shrieked and hugged each other with de- 
light, and it is likely that they will hand down 
these animals for generations in the tradition 
of the island. 

Two hours later the other party returned, 
driving three lean cows before them, and a 
start was made for the slip. At the public- 
house the policemen were given a drink while 
the dense crowd that was following waited in 
the lane. The island bull happened to be in 
a field close by, and he became wildly excited 
at the sight of the cows and of the strangely- 
dressed men. Two young islanders sidled up 
to me in a moment or two as I was resting on 
a wall, and one of them whispered in my ear — 

' Do you think they could take fines of us if 
we let out the bull on them? ' 

In face of the crowd of women and children, 
I could only say it was probable, and they 
slunk off. 

At the slip there was a good deal of bar- 
gaining, which ended in all the cattle being 
given back to their owners. It was plainly of 
90 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

no use to take them away, as they were worth 
nothing. 

When the last policeman had embarked, an 
old woman came forward from the crowd 
and, mounting on a rock near the slip, began 
a fierce rhapsody in Gaelic, pointing at the 
bailiff and waving her withered arms with 
extraordinary rage. 

' This man is my own son,' she said ; ' it is 
I that ought to know him. He is the first 
ruffian in the whole big world.' 

Then she gave an account of his life, 
coloured with a vindictive fury I cannot re- 
produce. As she went on the excitement 
became so intense I thought the man would 
be stoned before he could get back to his 
cottage. 

On these islands the women live only for 
their children, and it is hard to estimate the 
power of the impulse that made this old 
woman stand out and curse her son. 

In the fury of her speech I seem to look 
again into the strangely reticent temperament 
of the islanders, and to feel the passionate 
spirit that expresses itself, at odd moments 
only, with magnificent words and gestures. 

Old Pat has told me a story of the goose 
that lays the golden eggs, which he calls the 
Phoenix : — 

A poor widow had three sons and a daugh- 
ter. One day when her sons were out looking 
for sticks in the wood they saw a fine speckled 

91 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

bird flying in the trees. The next day they 
saw it again, and the eldest son told his 
brothers to go and get sticks by themselves, for 
he was going after the bird. 

He went after it, and brought it in with him 
when he came home in the evening. They put 
it in an old hencoop, and they gave it some of 
the meal they had for themselves ; — I don't 
know if it ate the meal, but they divided what 
they had themselves ; they could do no more. 

That night it laid a fine spotted egg in the 
basket. The next night it laid another. 

At that time its name was on the papers and 
many heard of the bird that laid the golden 
eggs, for the eggs were of gold, and there's 
no lie in it. 

When the boys went down to the shop the 
next day to buy a stone of meal, the shopman 
asked if he could buy the bird of them. Well, 
it was arranged in this way. The shopman 
would marry the boys' sister^ — a poor simple 
girl without a stitch of good clothes — and 
get the bird with her. 

Some time after that one of the boys sold 
an egg of the bird to a gentleman that was in 
the country. The gentleman asked him if he 
had the bird still. He said that the rtian who 
had married his sister was after getting it. 

* Well,' said the gentleman, ' the man who 
eats the heart of that bird will find a purse 
of gold beneath him every morning, and the 
man who eats its liver will be king of Ireland.' 

The boy went out — he was a simple poor 
fellow — and told the shopman. 

92 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Then the shopman brought in the bird and 
killed it, and he ate the heart himself and he 
gave the liver to his wife. 

When the boy saw that, there was great 
anger on him, and he went back and told the 
gentleman. 

* Do what I'm telling you,' said the gentle- 
man. * Go down now and tell the shopman 
and his wife to come up here to play a game 
of cards with me, for it's lonesome I am this 
evening.' 

When the boy was gone he mixed a vomit 
and poured the lot of it into a few naggins 
of whiskey, and he put a strong cloth on the 
table under the cards. 

The man came up with his wife and they 
began to play. 

The shopman won the first game and the 
gentleman made them drink a sup of the 
whiskey. 

They played again and the shopman won the 
second game. Then the gentleman made 
him drink a sup more of the whisky. 

As they were playing the third game the 
shopman and his wife got sick on the cloth, 
and the boy picked it up and carried it into 
the yard, for the gentleman had let him know 
what he was to do. Then he found the heart 
of the bird and he ate it, and the next morning 
when he turned in his bed there was a purse 
of gold under him. 

That is my story. 

When the steamer is expected I rarely fail 
93 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

to visit the boat-slip, as the men usually collect 
when she is in the offing, and lie arguing 
among their curaghs till she has made her 
visit to the south island, and is seen coming 
towards us. 

This morning I had a long talk with an old 
man who was rejoicing over the improvement 
he had seen here during the last ten or fifteen 
years. 

Till recently there was no communication 
with the mainland except by hookers, which 
were usually slow, and could only make the 
voyage in tolerably fine weather, so that if an 
islander went to a fair it was often three weeks 
before he could return. Now, however, the 
steamer comes here twice in the week, and the 
voyage is made in three or four hours. 

The pier on this island is also a novelty, 
and is much thought of, as it enables the 
hookers that still carry turf and cattle to dis- 
charge and take their cargoes directly from 
the shore. The water round it, however, is 
only deep enough for a hooker when the tide 
is nearly full, and will never float the steamer, 
so passengers must still come to land in 
curaghs. The boat-slip at the corner next the 
south island is extremely useful in calm 
weather, but it is exposed to a heavy roll from 
the south, and is so narrow that the curaghs 
run some danger of missing it in the tumult of 
the surf. 

In bad weather four men will often stand 
for nearly an hour at the top of the slip with a 
curagh in their hands, watching a point of 

94 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

rock towards the south where they can see the 
strength of the waves that are coming in. 

The instant a break is seen they swoop 
down to the surf, launch their curagh, and 
pull out to sea with incredible speed. Coming 
to land is attended with the same difficulty, 
and, if their moment is badly chosen, they are 
likely to be washed sideways and swamped 
among the rocks. 

This continual danger, which can only be 
escaped by extraordinary personal dexterity, 
has had considerable influence on the local 
character, as the waves have made it impossible 
for clumsy, foolhardy, or timid men to live 
on these islands. 

When the steamer is within a mile of the 
slip, the curaghs are put out and range them- 
selves — there are usually from four to a 
dozen — in two lines at some distance from 
the shore. 

The moment she comes in among them there 
is a short but desperate struggle for good 
places at her side. The men are lolling on 
their oars talking with the dreamy tone which 
comes with the rocking of the waves. The 
steamer lies to, and in an instant their faces 
become distorted with passion, while the oars 
bend and quiver with the strain. For one 
minute they seem utterly indifferent to their 
own safety and that of their friends and 
brothers. Then the sequence is decided, and 
they begin to talk again with the dreamy tone 
that is habitual to them, while they make fast 
and clamber up into the steamer. 

95 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

While the curaghs are out I am left with a 
few women and very old men who cannot row. 
One of these old men, whom I often talk with, 
has some fame as a bone-setter, and is said to 
have done remarkable cures, both here and 
on the mainland. Stories are told of how he 
has been taken off by the quality in their 
carriages through the hills of Connemara, to 
treat their sons and daughters, and come home 
with his pockets full of money. 

Another old man, the oldest on the island, 
is fond of telling me anecdotes — not folk- 
tales — of things that have happened here in 
his lifetime. 

He often tells me about a Connaught man 
who killed his father with the blow of a spade 
when he was in passion, and then fled to this 
island and threw himself on the mercy of some 
of the natives with whom he was said to be 
related. They hid him in a hole — which the 
old man has shown me — and kept him safe 
for weeks, though the police came and searched 
for him, and he could hear their boots grinding 
on the stones over his head. In spite of a 
reward which was offered, the island was 
incorruptible, and after much trouble the man 
was safely shipped to America. 

This impulse to protect the criminal is 
universal in the west. It seems partly due to 
the association between justice and the hated 
English jurisdiction, but more directly to the 
primitive feeling of these people, who are 
never criminals yet always capable of crime, 
that a man will not do wrong unless he is 

96 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

under the influence of a passion which is as 
irresponsible as a storm on the sea. If a man 
has killed his father, and is already sick and 
broken with remorse, they can see no reason 
why he should be dragged away and killed by 
the law. 

Such a man, they say, will be quiet all the 
rest of his life, and if you suggest that punish- 
ment is needed as an example, they ask, 
* Would any one kill his father if he was able 
to help it?' 

Some time ago, before the introduction of 
police, all the people of the islands were as 
innocent as the people here remain to this day. 
I have heard that at that time the ruling pro- 
prietor and magistrate of the north island 
used to give any man who had done wrong a 
letter to a jailer in Galway, and send him off 
by himself to serve a term of imprisonment. 

As there was no steamer, the ill-doer was 
given a passage in some chance hooker to the 
nearest point on the mainland. Then he 
walked for many miles along a desolate shore 
till he reached the town. When his time had 
been put through he crawled back along the 
same route, feeble and emaciated, and had 
often to wait many weeks before he could 
regain the island. Such at least is the story. 

It seems absurd to apply the same laws to 
these people and to the criminal classes of a 
city. The most intelligent man on Inishmaan 
has often spoken to me of his contempt of the 
law, and of the increase of crime the police 
have brought to Aranmor. On this island, he 

97 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

says, if men have a little difference, or a little 
fight, their friends take care it does not go 
too far, and in a little time it is forgotten. In 
Kilronan there is a band of men paid to make 
out cases for themselves; the moment a blow 
is struck they come down and arrest the 
man who gave it. The other man he quarreled 
with has to give evidence against him; whole 
families come down to the court and swear 
against each other till they become bitter 
enemies. If there is a conviction the man who 
is convicted never forgives. He waits his 
time, and before the year is out there is a 
cross summons, which the other man in turn 
never forgives. The feud continues to grow, 
till a dispute about the colour of a man's hair 
may end in a murder, after a year's forcing 
by the law. The mere fact that it is impossible 
to get reliable evidence in the island — not 
because the people are dishonest, but because 
they think the claim of kinship more sacred 
than the claims of abstract truth — turns the 
whole system of sworn evidence into a de- 
moralising farce, and it is easy to believe that 
law dealings on this false basis must lead to 
every sort of injustice. 

While I am discussing these questions with 
the old men the curaghs begin to come in with 
cargoes of salt, and flour, and porter. 

To-day a stir was made by the return of a 
native who had spent five years in New York. 
He came on shore with half a dozen people 
who had been shopping on the mainland, and 
walked up and down on the slip in his neat 

98 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

suit, looking strangely foreign to his birth- 
place, while his old mother of eighty-five ran 
about on the slippery seaweed, half crazy with 
delight, telling every one the news. 

When the curaghs were in their places the 
men crowded round him to bid him welcome. 
He shook hands with them readily enough, but 
with no smile of recognition. 

He is said to be dying. 

Yesterday — a Sunday — three young men 
rowed me over to Inisheer, the south island of 
the group. 

The stern of the curagh was occupied, so 
I was put in the bow with my head on a level 
with the gunnel. A considerable sea was run- 
ning in the sound, and when we came but from 
the shelter of this island, the curagh rolled 
and vaulted in a way not easy to describe. 

At one moment, as we went down into the 
furrow, green waves curled and arched them- 
selves above me; then in an instant I was 
flung up into the air and could look down on 
the heads of the rowers, as if we were sitting 
on a ladder, or out across a forest of white 
crests to the black cliff of Inishmaan. 

The men seemed excited and uneasy, and I 
thought for a moment that we were likely to 
be swamped. In a little while, however, I 
realised the capacity of the curagh to raise its 
head among the waves, and the motion became 
strangely exhilarating. Even, I thought, if 
we were dropped into the blue chasm of the 
waves, this death, with the fresh sea saltness 

99 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

in one's teeth, would be beter than most 
deaths one is likely to meet. 

When we reached the other island, it was 
raining heavily, so that we could not see any- 
thing of the antiquities or people. 

For the greater part of the afternoon we sat 
on the tops of empty barrels In the public- 
house, talking of the destiny of Gaelic. We 
were admitted as travellers, and the shutters of 
the shop were closed behind us, letting in only 
a glimmer of grey light, and the tumult of the 
storm. Towards evening it cleared a little 
and we came home in a calmer sea, but with 
a dead head-wind that gave the rowers all they 
could do to make the passage. 

On calm days I often go out fishing with 
Michael. When we reach the space above the 
slip where the curaghs are propped, bottom 
upwards, on the limestone, he lifts the prow 
of the one we are going to embark in, and I 
slip underneath and set the centre of the fore- 
most seat upon my neck. Then he crawls 
under the stern and stands up with the last 
seat upon his shoulders. We start for the sea. 
The long prow bends before me so that I see 
nothing but a few yards of shingle at my feet. 
A quivering pain runs from the top of my 
spine to the sharp stones that seem to pass 
through my pampooties, and grate upon my 
ankles. We stagger and groan beneath the 
weight ; but at last our feet reach the slip, and 
we run down with a half -trot like the pace of 
bare- footed children. 

ICX) 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

A yard from the sea we stop and lower the 
curagh to the right. It must be brought down 
gently — a difficult task for our strained and 
aching muscles — and sometimes as the gunnel 
reaches the slip I lose my balance and roll in 
among the seats. 

Yesterday we went out in the curagh that 
had been damaged on the day of my visit to 
Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars 
the freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip 
which was heated with the sunshine. We 
carried up water in the bailer — the * supeen/ a 
shallow wooden vessel like a soup-plate — and 
with infinite pains we got free and rode away. 
In a few minutes, however, I found the water 
spouting up at my feet. 

The patch had been misplaced, and this time 
we had no sacking. Michael borrowed my 
pocket scissors, and with admirable rapidity 
cut a square of flannel from the tail of his 
shirt and squeezed it into the hole, making it 
fast with a splint which he hacked from one 
of the oars. 

During our excitement the tide had carried 
us to the brink of the rocks, and I admired 
again the dexterity with which he got his oars 
into the water and turned us out as we were 
mounting on a wave that would have hurled 
us to destruction. 

With the injury to our curagh we did not 
go far from the shore. After a while I took 
a long spell at the oars, and gained a certain 
dexterity, though they are not easy to manage. 
The handles overlap by about six inches — in 

lOI 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

order to gain leverage, as the curagh is 
narrow — and at first it was almost impossible 
to avoid striking the upper oar against one's 
knuckles. The oars are rough and square, 
except at the ends, so one cannot do so with 
impunity. Again, a curagh with two light 
people in it floats on the water like a nut-shell, 
and the slightest inequality in the stroke throws 
the prow round at least a right angle from 
its course. In the first half -hour I found my- 
self more than once moving towards the point 
I had come from, greatly to Michael's 
satisfaction. 

This morning we were out again near the 
pier on the north side of the island. As we 
paddled slowly with the tide, trolling for 
pollock, several curaghs, weighed to the 
gunnel with kelp, passed us on their way to 
Kilronan. 

An old woman, rolled in red petticoats, was 
sitting on a ledge of rock that runs into the 
sea at the point where the curaghs were pass- 
ing from the south, hailing them in quavering 
Gaelic, and asking for a passage to Kilronan. 
The first one that came round without a 
cargo turned in from some distance and took 
her away. 

The morning had none of the supernatural 
beauty that comes over the island so often in 
rainy weather, so we basked in the vague 
enjoyment of the sunshine, looking down at 
the wild luxuriance of the vegetation beneath 
the sea, which contrasts strangely with the 
nakedness above it. 

I02 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Some dreams I have had in this cottage 
seem to give strength to the opinion that there 
is a psychic memory attached to certain neigh- 
bourhoods. 

Last night, after walking in a dream among 
buildings with strangely intense light on them, 
I heard a faint rhythm of music beginning far 
away on some stringed instrument. 

It came closer to me, gradually increasing 
in quickness and volume with an irresistibly 
definite progression. When it was quite near 
the sound began to move in my nerves and 
blood, and to urge me to dance with them. 

I knew that if I yielded I would be carried 
away to some moment of terrible agony, so 
I struggled to remain quiet, holding my knees 
together with my hands. 

The music increased continually, sounding 
like the strings of harps, tuned to a forgotten- 
scale, and having a resonance as searching a& 
the strings of the 'cello. 

Then the luring excitement became more 
powerful than my will, and my limbs moved 
in spite of me. 

In a moment I was swept away in a whirl- 
wind of notes. My breath and my thoughts 
and every impulse of my body, became a form 
of the dance, till I could not distinguish 
between the instruments and the rhythm and 
my own person or consciousness. 

For a while it seemed an excitement that 

was filled with joy, then it grew into an 

ecstasy where all existence was lost in a vortex 

of movement. I could not think there had 

103 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

ever been a life beyond the whirling of the 
dance. 

Then with a shock the ecstasy turned to an 
agony and rage. I struggled to free myself, 
but seemed only to increase the passion of the 
steps I moved to. When I shrieked I could 
only echo the notes of the rhythm. 

At last with a moment of uncontrollable 
frenzy I broke back to consciousness and 
awoke. 

I dragged myself trembling to the window 
of the cottage and looked out. The moon was 
glittering across the bay, and there was no 
sound anywhere on the island. 

I am leaving in two days, and old Pat 
Dirane has bidden me good-bye. He met me 
in the village this morning and took me into 
' his liftle tint,' a miserable hovel where he 
spends the night. 

I sat for a long time on his threshold, while 
he leaned on a stool behind me, near his bed, 
and told me the last story I shall have from 
him — a rude anecdote not worth recording. 
Then he told me with careful emphasis how he 
had wandered when he was a young man, and 
lived in a fine college, teaching Irish to the 
young priests! 

They say on the island that he can tell as 
many lies as four men: perhaps the stories he 
has learned have strengthened his imagination. 

When I stood up in the doorway to give 
him God's blessing, he leaned over on the 
straw that forms his bed, and shed teara, 
104 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Then he turned to me again, lifting up one 
trembling hand, with the mitten worn to a 
hole on the palm, from the rubbing of his 
crutch. 

* I '11 not see you again,' he said, with tears 
trickling on his face, * and you 're a kindly 
man. When you come back next year I won't 
be in it. I won't live beyond the winter. But 
listen now to what I 'm telling you ; let you 
put insurance on me in the city of Dublin, and 
it 's five hundred pounds you '11 get on my 
burial.' 

This evening, my last in the island, is also 
the evening of the ' Pattern ' — a festival 
something like ' Pardons ' of Brittany. 

I waited especially to see it, but a piper who 
was expected did not come, and there was no 
amusement. A few friends and relations 
came over from the other island and stood 
about the public-house in their best clothes, 
but without music dancing was impossible. 

I believe on some occasions when the piper 
is present there is a fine day of dancing and 
excitement, but the Galway piper is getting 
old, and is not easily induced to undertake the 
voyage. 

Last night, St. John's Eve, the fires were 
lighted and boys ran about with pieces of the 
burning turf, though I could not find out if 
the idea of lighting the house fires from the 
bonfires is still found on the island. 

I have come out of an hotel full of tourists 
and commercial travelers, to stroll along the 

105 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

edge of Gal way bay, and look out in the 
direction of the islands. The sort of yearning 
I feel towards those lonely rocks is indescrib- 
ably acute. This town, that is usually so full 
of wild human interest, seems in my present 
mood a tawdry medley of all that is crudest 
in modern life. The nullity of the rich and 
the squalor of the poor give me the same pang 
of wondering disgust; yet the islands are 
fading already and I can hardly realise that 
(she smell of the seaweed and the drone of the 
Atlantic are still moving round them. 

One of my island friends has written to 
me: — 

Dear John Synge, — I am for a long time 
expecting a letter from you and I think you 
are forgetting this island altogether. 

Mr. died a long time ago on the big 

island and his boat was on anchor in the 
harbour and the wind blew her to Black Head 
and broke her up after his death. 

Tell me are you learning Irish since you 
went. We have a branch of the Gaelic 
league here now and the people is going on 
well with the Irish and reading. 

I will write the next letter in Irish to you. 
Tell me will you come to see us next year and 
if you will you '11 write a letter before you. 
All your loving friends is well in health. — 
Mise do chara go buan. 

Another boy I sent some baits to has written 
io6 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

to me also, beginning his letter in Irish and 
ending it in English: — 

Dear John, — I got your letter four days 
ago, and there was pride and joy on me 
because it was written in Irish, and a fine, 
good, pleasant letter it was. The baits you 
sent are very good, but I lost two of them and 
half my line. A big fish came and caught the 
bait, and the line was bad and half of the line 
and the baits went away. My sister has come 
back from America, but I 'm thinking it won't 
be long till she goes away again, for it is 
lonesome and poor she finds the island now. — • 
I am your friend. . . . 

Write soon and let you write in Irish, if 
you don't I won't look on it. 



107 



PART II 

The evening before I returned to the west 
I wrote to Michael — who had left the islands 
to earn his living on the mainland — to tell 
him that I would call at the house where he 
lodged the next morning, which was a Sunday. 

A young girl with fine western features, 
and little English, came out when I knocked 
at the door. She seemed to have heard all 
about me, and was so filled with the import- 
ance of her message that she could hardly 
speak it intelligibly. 

' She got your letter,' she said, confusing 
the pronouns, as is often done in the west, 
* she is gone to Mass, and she '11 be in the 
square after that. Let your honour go now 
and sit in the square and Michael will find 
you.' 

As I was returning up the main street I met 
Michael wandering down to meet me, as he 
had got tired of waiting. 

He seemed to have grown a powerful man 
since I had seen him, and was now dressed in 
the heavy brown flannels of the Connaught 
labourer. After a little talk we turned back 
together and went out on the sandhills above 
the town. Meeting him here a little beyond 
the threshold of my hotel I was singularly 
struck with the refinement of his nature, which 
io8 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

has hardly been influenced by his new life, 
and the townsmen and sailors he has met with. 

' I do often come outside the town on Sun- 
day/ he said while we were talking, ' for what 
is there to do in a town in the middle of all the 
people when you are not at your work ? ' 

A little later another Irish-speaking labourer 
— di friend of Michael's — joined us, and we lay 
for hours talking and arguing on the grass. 
The day was unbearably sultry, and the sand 
and the sea near us were crowded with half- 
naked women, but neither of the young men 
seemed to be aware of their presence. Before 
we went back to the town a man came out to 
ring a young horse on the sand close to where 
we were lying, and then the interest of my 
companions was intense. 

Late in the evening I met Michael again, 
and we wandered round the bay, which was 
still filled with bathing women, until it was 
quite dark. I shall not see him again before 
my return from the islands, as he is busy to- 
morrow, and on Tuesday I go out with the 
steamer. 

I returned to the middle island this morning, 
in the steamer to Kilronan, and on here in a 
curagh that had gone over with salt fish. As 
I came up from the slip the doorways in the 
village filled with women and children, and 
several came down on the roadway to shake 
hands and bid me a thousand welcomes. 

Old Pat Dirane is dead, and several of my 
friends have gone to America; that is all the 
109 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

news they have to give me after an absence 
of many months. 

When I arrived at the cottage I was wel- 
comed by the old people, and great excitement 
was made by some little presents I had bought 
them — a pair of folding scissors for the old 
woman, a strop for her husband, and some 
other trifles. 

Then the youngest son, Columb, who is still 
at home, went into the inner room and brought 
out the alarm clock I sent them last year when 
I went away. 

' I am very fond of this clock,' he said, pat- 
ting it on the back ; ' it will ring for me any 
morning when I want to go out fishing. Bedad, 
there are no two clocks in the island that would 
be equal to it.' 

I had some photographs to show them that 
I took here last year, and while I was sitting 
on a little stool near the door of the kitchen, 
showing them to the family, a beautiful young 
woman I had spoken to a few times last year 
slipped in, and after a wonderfully simple and 
cordial speech of welcome, she sat down on the 
floor beside me to look on also. 

The complete absence of shyness or self- 
consciousness in most of these people gives 
them a peculiar charm, and when this young 
and beautiful woman leaned across my knees 
to look nearer at some photograph that pleased 
her, I felt more than ever the strange simplicity 
of the island life. 

Last year when I came here everything was 
new, and the people were a little strange with 
no 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

me, but now I am familiar with them and their 
way of Hfe, so that their qualities strike me 
more forcibly than before. 

When my photographs of this island had 
been examined with immense delight, and 
every person in them had been identified — even 
those who only showed a hand or a leg — I 
brought out some I had taken in County Wick- 
low. Most of them were fragments, showing 
fairs in Rathdnmi or Aughrim, men cutting 
turf on the hills, or other scenes of inland life, 
yet they gave the greatest delight to these 
people who are wearied of the sea. 

This year I see a darker side of life in the 
islands. The sun seldom shines, and day after 
day a cold south-western wind blows over the 
cliffs, bringing up showers of hail and dense 
masses of cloud. 

The sons who are at home stay out fishing 
whenever it is tolerably calm, from about three 
in the morning till after nightfall, yet they earn 
little, as fish are not plentiful. 

The old man fishes also with a long rod and 
ground-bait, but as a rule has even smaller 
success. 

When the weather breaks completely, fishing 
is abandoned, and they both go down and dig 
potatoes in the rain. The women sometimes 
help them, but their usual work is to look after 
the calves and do their spinning in the house. 

There is a vague depression over the family 
this year, because of the two sons who have 

III 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

gone away, Michael to the mainland, and an- 
other son, who was working in Kilronan last 
year, to the United States. 

A letter came yesterday from Michael to his 
mother. It was written in English, as he is 
the only one of the family who can read or 
write in Irish, and I heard it being slowly 
spelled out and translated as I sat in my room. 
A little later the old woman brought it in for 
me to read. 

He told her first about his work, and the 
wages he is getting. Then he said that one 
night he had been walking in the town, and 
had looked up among the streets, and thought 
to himself what a grand night it would be on 
the Sandy Head of this island — not, he added, 
that he was feeling lonely or sad. At the end 
he gave an account, with the dramatic em- 
phasis of the folk-tale, of how he had met me 
on the Sunday morning, and, * believe me,' he 
said, ' it was the fine talk we had for two hours 
or three.' He told them also of a knife I had 
given him that was so fine, no one on the island 
* had ever seen the like of her.' 

Another day a letter came from the son who 
is in America, to say that he had had a slight 
accident to one of his arms, but was well 
again, and that he was leaving New York and 
going a few hundred miles up the country. 

All the evening afterwards the old woman 
sat on her stool at the corner of the fire with 
her shawl over her head, keening piteously to 
herself. America appeared far away, yet she 
seems to have felt that, after all, it was only 

112 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the other edge of the Atlantic, and now when 
she hears them talking of railroads and inland 
cities where there is no sea, things she cannot 
understand, it comes home to her that her son 
is gone for ever. She often tells me how she 
used to sit on the wall behind the house last 
year and watch the hooker he worked in 
coming out of Kilronan and beating up the 
sound, and what company it used to be to her 
the time they'd all be out. 

The maternal feeling is so powerful on 
these islands that it gives a life of torment to 
the women. Their sons grow up to be ban- 
ished as soon as they are of age, or to live 
here in continual danger on the sea; their 
daughters go away also, or are worn out in 
their youth with bearing children that grow up 
to harass them in their own turn a little later. 

There has been a storm for the last twenty- 
four hours, and I have been wandering on the 
cliffs till my hair is stiff with salt. Immense 
masses of spray were flying up from the base 
of the cliff, and were caught at times by the 
wind and whirled away to fall at some dis- 
tance from the shore. When one of these 
happened to fall on me, I had to crouch down 
for an instant, wrapped and blinded by a white 
hail of foam. 

The waves were so enormous that when I 
saw one more than usually large coming to- 
wards me, I turned instinctively to hide myself, 
as one blinks when struck upon the eyes. 

After a few hours the mind grows bewil- 

113 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

dered with the endless change and struggle 
of the sea, and an utter despondency replaces 
the first moment of exhilaration. 

At the south-west corner of the island I 
came upon a number of people gathering the 
seaweed that is now thick on the rocks. It 
was raked from the surf by the men, and then 
carried up to the brow of the cliff by a party 
of young girls. 

In addition to their ordinary clothing these 
girls wore a raw sheepskin on their shoulders, 
to catch the oozing sea-water, and they looked 
strangely wild and seal-like with the salt caked 
upon their lips and wreathes of seaweed in 
their hair. 

For the rest of my walk I saw no living 
thing but one flock of curlews, and a few 
pipits hiding among the stones. 

About the sunset the clouds broke and the 
storm turned to a hurricane. Bars of purple 
cloud stretched across the sound where im- 
mense waves were rolling from the west, 
wreathed with snowy phantasies of spray. 
Then there was the bay full of green delirium, 
and the Twelve Pins touched with mauve and 
scarlet in the east. 

The suggestion from this world of inarticu- 
late power was immense, and now at midnight, 
when the wind is abating, I am still trembling 
and flushed with exultation. 

I have been walking through the wet lanes 
in my pampooties in spite of the rain, and I 
have brought on a feverish cold. 
114 




Carrying Seaweed For Kelp 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

The wind is terrific. If anything serious 
should happen to me I might die here and be 
nailed in my box, and shoved down into a wet 
crevice in the graveyard before any one could 
know it on the mainland. 

Two days ago a curagh passed from the 
south island — they can go out when we are 
weather-bound because of a sheltered cove 
in their island — it was thought in search of 
the Doctor. It became too rough afterwards 
to make the return journey, and it was only 
this morning we saw them repassing towards 
the south-east in a terrible sea. 

A four-oared curagh with two men in her 
besides the rowers — probably the Priest and 
the Doctor — went first, followed by the three- 
oared curagh from the south island, which 
ran more danger. Often when they go for 
the Doctor in weather like this, they bring the 
Priest also, as they do not know if it will be 
possible to go for him if he is needed later. 

As a rule there is little illness, and the 
women often manage their confinements 
among themselves without any trained assis- 
tance. In most cases all goes well, but at 
times a curagh is sent off in desperate haste 
for the Priest and the Doctor when it is too 
late. 

The baby that spent some days here last 
year is now established in the house ; I suppose 
the old woman has adopted him to console 
herself for the loss of her own sons. 

He is now a well-grown child, though not 
yet able to say more than a few words of 
117 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Gaelic. His favourite amusement is to stand 
behind the door with a stick, waiting for any- 
wandering pig or hen that may chance to come 
in, and then to dash out and pursue them. 
There are two young kittens in the kitchen 
also, which he ill-treats, without meaning to 
do them harm. 

Whenever the old woman comes into my 
room with turf for the fire, he walks in 
solemnly behind her with a sod under each 
arm, deposits them on the back of the fire with 
great care, and then flies off round the corner 
with his long petticoats trailing behind him. 

He has not yet received any official name 
on the island, as he has not left the fireside, 
but in the house they usually speak of him as 
' Michaeleen beug ' (i.e. ' little small- 
Michael'). 

Now and then he is slapped, but for the 
most part the old woman keeps him in order 
with stories of ' the long-toothed hag,' that 
lives in the Dun and eats children who 
are not good. He spends half his day eating 
cold potatoes and drinking very strong tea, 
yet seems in perfect health. 

An Irish letter has come to me from 
Michael. I will translate it literally. 

Dear noble Person, — I write this letter 

with joy and pride that you found the way to 

the house of my father the day you were on 

the steamship. I am thinking there will not 

ii8 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

be loneliness on you, for there will be the fine 
beautiful Gaelic League and you will be 
learning powerfully. 

I am thinking there is no one in life walking 
with you now but your own self from morning 
till night, and great is the pity. 

What way are my mother and my three 
brothers and my sisters, and do not forget 
white Michael, and the poor little child and the 
old grey woman, and Rory. I am getting a 
forget fulness on all my friends and kindred. — 
I am your friend ... 

It is curious how he accuses himself of for- 
getfulness after asking for all his family by 
name. I suppose the first home-sickness is 
wearing away and he looks on his inde- 
pendent wellbeing as a treason towards his 
kindred. 

One of his friends was in the kitchen when 
the letter was brought to me, and, by the old 
man's wish, he read it out loud as soon as I 
had finished it. When he came to the last 
sentence he hesitated for a moment, and then 
omitted it altogether. 

This young man had come up to bring me 
a copy of the ' Love Songs of Connaught,' 
which he possesses, and I persuaded him to 
read, or rather chant me some of them. When 
he had read a couple I found that the old 
woman knew many of them from her child- 
hood, though her version was often not the 
same as what was in the book. She was rocking 
herself on a stool in the chimney corner beside 
119 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

a pot of indigo, in which she was dyeing wool, 
and several times when the young man finished 
a poem she took it up again and recited the 
verses with exquisite musical intonation, put- 
ting a wist fulness and passion into her voice 
that seemed to give it all the cadences that are 
sought in the profoundest poetry. 

The lamp had burned low, and another ter- 
rible gale was howling and shrieking over the 
island. It seemed like a dream that I should 
be sitting here among these men and women 
listening to this rude and beautiful poetry that 
is filled with the oldest passions of the world. 

The horses have been coming back for the 
last few days from their summer's grazing 
in Connemara. They are landed at the sandy 
beach where the cattle were shipped last year, 
and I went down early this morning to watch 
their arrival through the waves. The hooker 
was anchored at some distance from the shore, 
but I could see a horse standing at the gunnel 
surrounded by men shouting and flipping at it 
with bits of rope. In a moment it jumped over 
into the sea, and some men, who were waiting 
for it in a curagh, caught it by the halter and 
towed it to within twenty yards of the surf. 
Then the curagh turned back to the hooker, 
and the horse was left to make its own way 
to the land. 

As I was standing about a man came up to 
me and asked after the usual salutations : — 

' Is there any war in the world at this time, 
noble person ? ' 

1 20 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I told him something of the excitement in 
the Transvaal, and then another horse came 
near the waves and I passed on and left him. 

Afterwards I walked round the edge of the 
sea to the pier, where a quantity of turf has 
recently been brought in. It is usually left for 
some time stacked on the sandhills, and then 
carried up to the cottages in panniers slung on 
donkeys or any horses that are on the island. 

They have been busy with it the last few 
weeks, and the track trom the village to the 
pier has been filled with lines of red-petti- 
coated boys driving their donkeys before them, 
or cantering down on their backs when the 
panniers are empty. 

In some ways these men and women seem 
strangely far away from me. They have the 
same emotions that I have, and the animals 
have, yet I cannot talk to them when there is 
much to say, more than to the dog that whines 
beside me in a mountain fog. 

There is hardly an hour I am with them 
that I do not feel the shock of some incon- 
ceivable idea, and then again the shock of some 
vague emotion that is familiar to them and to 
me. On some days I feel this island as a per- 
fect home and resting place; on other days I 
feel that I am a waif among the people. I 
can feel more with them than they can feel 
with me, and while I wander among them, they 
like me sometimes, and laugh at me sometimes, 
yet never know what I am doing. 

In the evenings I sometimes meet with a 

121 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

girl who is not yet half through her 'teens, 
yet seems in some ways more consciously de- 
veloped than any one else that I have met here. 
She has passed part of her life on the main- 
land, and the disillusion she found in Galway 
has coloured her imagination. 

As we sit on stools on either side of the fire 
I hear her voice going backwards and forwards 
in the same sentence from the gaiety of a child 
to the plaintive intonation of an old race that 
is worn with sorrow. At one moment she 
is a simple peasant, at another she seems to be 
looking out at the world with a sense of pre- 
historic disillusion and to sum up in the ex- 
pression of her grey-blue eyes the whole 
external despondency of the clouds and sea. 

Our conversation is usually disjointed. One 
evening we talked of a town on the mainland. 

' Ah, it's a queer place,' she said : ' I wouldn't 
choose to live in it. It's a queer place, and 
indeed I don't know the place that isn't.' 

Another evening we talked of the people 
who live on the island or come to visit it. 

* Father is gone,' she said ; ' he was 

a kind man but a queer man. Priests is queer 
people, and I don't know who isn't.' 

Then after a long pause she told me with 
seriousness, as if speaking of a thing that sur- 
prised herself, and should surprise me, that 
she was very fond of the boys. 

In our talk, which is sometimes full of the 
innocent realism of childhood, she is always 
pathetically eager to say the right thing and 
be engaging. 

122 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

One evening I found her trying to light a 
fire in the Httle side room of her cottage, 
where there is an ordinary fireplace. I went 
in to help her and showed her how to hold up 
a paper before the mouth of the chimney to 
make a draught, a method she had never seen. 
Then I told her of men who live alone in 
Paris and make their own fires that they may 
have no one to bother them. She was sitting 
in a heap on the floor staring into the turf, 
and as I finished she looked up with surprise. 

' They're like me so,' she said; ' would any- 
one have thought that ! ' 

Below the sympathy we feel there is still 
a chasm between us. 

' Musha,' she muttered as I was leaving her 
this evening, ' I think it's to hell you'll be going 
by and by.' 

Occasionally I meet her also in a kitchen 
where young men go to play cards after dark 
and a few girls slip in to share the amusement. 
At such times her eyes shine in the light of 
the candles, and her cheeks flush with the first 
tumult of youth, till she hardly seems the same 
girl who sits every evening droning to herself 
over the turf. 

A branch of the Gaelic League has been 
started here since my last visit, and every Sun- 
day afternoon three little girls walk through 
the village ringing a shrill hand-bell, as a sig- 
nal that the women's meeting is to be held, — 
here it would be useless to fix an hour, as the 
hours are not recognized. 
123 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Soon afterwards bands of girls — of all 
ages from five to twenty-five begin to troop 
down to the schoolhouse in their reddest Sun- 
day petticoats. It is remarkable that these 
young women are willing to spend their one 
afternoon of freedom in laborious studies of 
orthography for no reason but a vague rev- 
erence for the Gaelic. It is true that they 
owe this reverence, or most of it, to the 
influence of some recent visitors, yet the fact 
that they feel such an influence so keenly is 
itself of interest. 

In the older generation that did not come 
under the influence of the recent language 
movement, I do not see any particular affection 
for Gaelic. Whenever they are able, they 
speak English to their children, to render them 
more capable of making their way in life. 
Even the young men sometimes say to me — 

* There's very hard English on you, and I 
wish to God I had the like of it.' 

The women are the great conservative force 
in this matter of the language. They learn 
a little English in school and from their par- 
ents, but they rarely have occasion to speak 
with any one who is not a native of the islands, 
so their knowledge of the foreign tongue re- 
mains rudimentary. In my cottage I have 
never heard a word of English from the 
women except when they were speaking to 
the pigs or to the dogs, or when the girl was 
reading a letter in English. Women, however, 
with a more assertive temperament, who have 
had, apparently, the same opportunities, often 
124 



» 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

attain a considerable fluency, as is the case 
with one, a relative of the old woman of the 
house, who often visits here. 

In the boys' school, where I sometimes look 
in, the children surprise me by their knowledge 
of English, though they always speak in Irish 
among themselves. The school itself is a 
comfortless building in a terribly bleak pos- 
ition. In cold weather the children arrive 
in the morning with a sod of turf tied up with 
their books, a simple toll which keeps the fire 
well supplied, yet, I believe, a more modern 
method is soon to be introduced. 

I am in the north island again, looking out 
with a singular sensation to the cliffs across 
the sound. It is hard to believe that those 
hovels I can just see in the south are filled 
with people whose lives have the strange 
quality that is found in the oldest poetry and 
legend. Compared with them the falling off 
that has come with the increased prosperity 
of this island is full of discouragment. The 
charm which the people over there share with 
the birds and flowers has been replaced here 
by the anxiety of men who are eager for gain. 
The eyes and expression are different, though 
the faces are the same, and even the children 
here seem to have an indefinable modern 
quality that is absent from the men of 
Iriishmaan. 

My voyage from the middle island was wild. 
The morning was so stormy, that in ordinary 
circumstances I would not have attempted the 

125 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

passage, but as I had arranged to travel with 
a curagh that was coming over for the Parish 
Priest — who is to hold stations on Inish- 
maan — I did not like to draw back. 

I went out in the morning and walked up 
to the cliffs as usual. Several men I fell in 
with shook their heads when I told them I was 
going away, and said they doubted if a curagh 
could cross the sound with the sea that was in 
it. 

When I went back to the cottage I found 
the Curate had just come across from the south 
island, and had had a worse passage than any 
he had yet experienced. 

The tide was to turn at two o'clock, and 
after that it was thought the sea would be 
calmer, as the wind and the waves would be 
running from the same point. We sat about 
in the kitchen all the morning, with men 
coming in every few minutes to give their 
opinion whether the passage should be at- 
tempted, and at what points the sea was likely 
to be at its worst. 

At last it was decided we should go, and I 
started for the pier in a wild shower of rain 
with the wind howling in the walls. The 
schoolmaster and a priest who was to have 
gone with me came out as I was passing 
through the village and advised me not to 
make the passage; but my crew had gone on 
towards the sea, and I thought it better to go 
after them. The eldest son of the family was 
coming with me, and I considered that the old 
man, who knew the waves better than I did, 
126 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

would not send out his son if there was more 
than reasonable danger. 

I found my crew waiting for me under a 
high wall below the village, and we went on 
together. The island had never seemed so 
desolate. Looking out over the black lime- 
stone through the driving rain to the gulf of 
struggling waves, an indescribable feeling of 
dejection came over me. 

The old man gave me his view of the use 
of fear. 

* A man who is not afraid of the sea will 
soon be drowned,' he said, * for he will be 
going out on a day he shouldn't. But we 
do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be 
drownded now and again.' 

A little crowd of neighbours had collected 
lower down to see me off, and as we crossed 
the sand hills we had to shout to each other 
to be heard above the wind. 

The crew carried down the curagh and then 
stood under the lee of the pier tying on their 
hats with strings and drawing on their oil- 
skins. 

They tested the braces of the oars, and the 
oarpins, and everything in the curagh with a 
care I had not seen them give to anything, 
then my bag was lifted in, and we were ready. 
Besides the four men of the crew a man was 
going with us who wanted a passage to this 
island. As he was scrambling into the bow, 
an old man stood forward from the crowd. 

' Don't take that man with you,' he said. 
' Last week they were taking him to Clare 
127 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and the whole lot of them were near drownded. 
Another day he went to Inisheer and they 
broke three ribs of the curagh, and they 
coming back. There is not the like of him 
for ill-luck in the three islands/ 

'The divil choke your old gob,' said the 
man, 'you will be talking.' 

We set off. It was a four-oared curagh, 
and I was given the last seat so as to leave 
the stern for the man who was steering with 
an oar, worked at right angles to the others 
by an extra thole-pin in the stern gunnel. 

When we had gone about a hundred yards 
they ran up a bit of a sail in the bow and the 
pace became extraordinarily rapid. 

The shower had passed over and the wind 
had fallen, but large, magnificently brilliant 
waves were rolling down on us at right angles 
to our course. 

Every instant the steersman whirled us 
round with a sudden stroke of his oar, the 
prow reared up and then fell into the next 
furrow with a crash, throwing up masses of 
spray. As it did so, the stern in its turn was 
thrown up, and both the steersman, who let 
go his oar and clung with both hands to the 
gunnel, and myself, were lifted high up above 
the sea. 

The wave passed, we regained our course 
and rowed violently for a few yards, when 
the same manoeuvre had to be repeated. As 
we worked out into the sound we began to 
meet another class of waves, that could be 
128 




A Four-Oared Curagh 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

seen for some distance towering above the 
rest. 

When one of these came in sight, the first 
effort was r.o get beyond its reach. The steers- 
man began crying out in Gaelic * Siubhal, 
siubhal ' ('Run, run'), and sometimes, when 
the mass was gliding towards us with horrible 
speed, his voice rose to a shriek. Then the 
rowers themselves took up the cry, and the 
curagh seemed to leap and quiver with the 
frantic terror of a beast till the wave passed 
behind it or fell with a crash beside the stern. 

It was in this racing with the waves that 
our chief danger lay. If the wave could be 
avoided, it was better to do so, but if it over- 
took us while we were trying to escape, and 
caught us on the broadside, our destruction 
was certain. I could see the steersman 
quivering with the excitement of his task, for 
any error in his judgment would have 
swamped us. 

We had one narrow escape. A wave ap- 
peared high above the rest, and there was the 
usual moment of intense exertion. It was of 
no use, and in an instant the wave seemed to 
be hurling itself upon us. With a yell of 
rage the steersman struggled with his oar to 
bring our prow to meet it. He had almost 
succeeded, when there was a crash and rush 
of water round us. I felt as if I had been 
struck upon the back with knotted ropes. 
White foam gurgled round my knees and eyes. 
The curagh reared up, swaying and trembling 

131 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

for a moment, and then fell safely into the 
furrow. 

This was our worst moment, though more 
than once, when several waves came so closely 
together that we had no time to regain control 
of the canoe between them, we had some 
dangerous work. Our lives depended upon the 
skill and courage of the men, as the life of 
the rider or swimmer is often in his own 
hands, and the excitement was too great to 
allow time for fear. 

I enjoyed the passage. Down in this 
shallow trough of canvas that bent and 
trembled with the motion of the men, I had 
a far more intimate feeling of the glory and 
power of the waves than I have ever known 
in a steamer. 

Old Mourteen is keeping me company again, 
and I am now able to understand the greater 
part of his Irish. 

He took me out to-day to show me the 
remains of some cloghauns, or beehive dwell- 
ings, that are left near the central ridge of the 
island. After I had looked at them we lay 
down in the corner of a little field, filled with 
the autumn sunshine and the odour of 
withering flowers, while he told me a long 
folk-tale which took more than an hour to 
narrate. 

He is so blind that I can gaze at him without 

discourtesy, and after a while the expression 

of his face made me forget to listen, and I 

lay dreamily in the sunshine letting the 

132 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

antique formulas of the story blend with the 
suggestions from the prehistoric masonry I 
lay on. The glow of childish transport that 
came over him when he reached the nonsense 
ending — so common in these tales — recalled 
me to myself, and I listened attentively while 
he gabbled with delighted haste : * They 
found the path and I found the puddle. They 
were drowned and I was found. If it 's all 
one to me tonight, it wasn't all one to them 
the next night. Yet, if it wasn't itself, not a 
thing did they lose but an old back tooth ' — or 
some such gibberish. 

As I led him home through the paths he 
described to me — it is thus we get along — 
lifting him at times over the low walls he is 
too shaky to climb, he brought the conversa- 
tion to the topic they are never weary of — 
my views on marriage. 

He stopped as we reached the summit of 
the island, with the stretch of the Atlantic 
just visible behind him. 

* Whisper, noble person,' he began, ' do you 
never be thinking on the young girls? The 
time I was a young man, the devil a one of 
them could I look on without wishing to 
marry her.' 

* Ah, Mourteen,' I answered, ' it 's a great 
wonder you 'd be asking me. What at all do 
you think of me yourself?' 

' Bedad, noble person, I 'm thinking it 's 
soon you '11 be getting married. Listen to 
what I 'm telling you : a man who is not 
married is no better than an old jackass. He 

133 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

goes into his sister's house, and into his 
brother's house ; he eats a bit in this place and 
a bit in another place, but he has no home for 
himself; like an old jackass straying on the 
rocks.' 

I have left Aran. The steamer had a more 
than usually heavy cargo, and it was after four 
o'clock when we sailed from Kilronan. 

Again I saw the three low rocks sink down 
into the sea with a moment of inconceivable 
distress. It was a clear evening, and as we 
came out into the bay the sun stood like an 
aureole behind the cliffs of Inishmaan. A 
little later a brilliant glow came over the sky, 
throwing out the blue of the sea and of the 
hills of Connemara. 

When it was quite dark, the cold became 
intense, and I wandered about the lonely 
vessel that seemed to be making her own way 
across the sea. I was the only passenger, and 
all the crew, except one boy who was steering, 
were huddled together in the warmth of the 
engine-room. 

Three hours passed, and no one stirred. 
The slowness of the vessel and the lamentation 
of the cold sea about her sides became almost 
unendurable. Then the lights of Gal way came 
in sight, and the crew appeared as we beat up 
slowly to the quay. 

Once on shore I had some difficulty in find- 
ing any one to carry my baggage to the rail- 
way. When I found a man in the darkness 
and got my bag on his shoulders, he turned 

134 




'It's Real Heavy She Is, Your Honour/ 

He Said, I'm Thinking It's Gold 

There Will Be In It' 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

out to be drunk, and I had trouble to keep him 
from rolling from the wharf with all my 
possessions. He professed to be taking me by 
a short cut into the town, but when we were 
in the middle of a waste of broken buildings 
and skeletons of ships he threw my bag on the 
ground and sat down on it. 

* It 's real heavy she is, your honour,' he 
said ; ' I 'm thinking it 's gold there will be 
in it' 

* Divil a hap'worth is there in it at all but 
books,' I answered him in Gaelic. 

* Bedad, is mor an truaghe ' (* It 's a big 
pity '), he said; * if it was gold was in it it 's 
the thundering spree we'd have together this 
night in Gal way.' 

In about half an hour I got my luggage once 
niore on his back, and we made our way into 
the city. 

Later in the quay I went down towards 
the quay to look for Michael. As I turned 
into the narrow street where he lodges, some 
one seemed to be following me in the shadow, 
and when I stopped to find the number of his 
house I heard the * Failte ' (Welcome) of 
Inishmaan pronounced close to me. 

It was Michael. 

* I saw you in the street,' he said, * but I 
was ashamed to speak to you in the middle 
of the people, so I followed you the way I 'd 
see if you 'd remember me.' 

We turned back together and walked about 
the town till he had to go to his lodgings. He 

137 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

was still just the same, with all his old sim- 
plicity and shrewdness; but the work he has 
here does not agree with his, and he is not 
contented. 

It was the eve of the Parnell celebration in 
Dublin, and the town was full of excursionists 
waiting for a train which was to start at mid- 
night. When Michael left me I spent some 
time in an hotel, and then wandered down to 
the railway. 

A wild crowd was on the platform, surging 
round the train in every stage of intoxication. 
It gave me a better instance than I had yet 
seen of the half -savage temperament of Con- 
naught. The tension of human excitement 
seemed greater in this insignificant crowd than 
anything I have felt among enormous mobs 
in Rome or Paris. 

There were a few people from the islands 
on the platform, and I got in along with them 
to a third-class carriage. One of the women 
of the party had her niece with her, a young 
girl from Connaught who was put beside me; 
at the other end of the carriage there were 
some old men who were talking Irish, and a 
young man who had been a sailor. 

When the train started there were wild 
cheers and cries on the platform, and in the 
train itself the noise was intense; men and 
women shrieking and singing and beating 
their sticks on the partitions. At several 
stations there was a rush to the bar, so the 
excitement increased as we proceeded. 

At Ballinasloe there were some soldiers on 

138 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the platform looking for places. The sailor 
in our compartment had a dispute with one 
of them, and in an instant the door was flung 
open and the compartment was filled with 
reeling uniforms and sticks. Peace was made 
after a moment of uproar and the soldiers got 
out, but as they did so a pack of their women 
followers thrust their bare heads and arms 
into the doorway, cursing and blaspheming 
with extraordinary rage. 

As the train moved away a moment later, 
these women set up a frantic lamentation. I 
looked out and caught a glimpse of the wildest 
heads and figures I have ever seen, shrieking 
and screaming and waving their naked arms 
in the light of the lanterns. 

As the night went on girls began crying out 
in the carriage next us, and I could hear the 
words of obscene songs when the train 
stopped at a station. 

In our own compartment the sailor would 
allow no one to sleep, and talked all night with 
sometimes a touch of wit or brutality, and 
always with a beautiful fluency with wild 
temperament behind it. 

The old men in the corner, dressed in black 
coats that had something of the antiquity of 
heirlooms, talked all night among themselves 
in Gaelic. The young girl beside me lost her 
shyness after a while, and let me point out the 
features of the country that were beginning 
to appear through the dawn as we drew nearer 
Dublin. She was delighted with the shadows 
of the trees — trees are rare in Connaught — 

139 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and with the canal, which was beginning to 
reflect the morning light. Every time I 
showed her some new shadow she cried out 
with naive excitement — 

* Oh, it 's lovely, but I can't see it.' 
This presence at my side contrasted 
curiously with the brutality that shook the 
barrier behind us. The whole spirit of the 
west of Ireland, with its strange wildness and 
reserve, seemed moving in this single train 
to pay a last homage to the dead statesman of 
the east. 



140 



PART III 

A LETTER has come from Michael while I am 
in Paris. It is in English. 

My dear Friend, — I hope that you are in 
good health since I have heard from you 
before, its many a time I do think of you since 
and it was not forgetting you I was for the 
future. 

I was at home in the beginning of March 
for a fortnight and was very bad with the 
Influence, but I took good care of myself. 

I am getting good wages from the first of 
this year, and I am afraid I won't be able to 
stand with it, although it is not hard, I am 
working in a saw-mills and getting the money 
for the wood and keeping an account of it. 

I am getting a letter and some news from 
home two or three times a week, and they are 
all well in health, and your friends in the 
island as well as if I mentioned them. 

Did you see any of my friends in Dublin 
Mr. or any of those gentlemen or gentle- 
women. 

I think I soon try America but not until 
next year if I am alive. 

I hope we might meet again in good and 
pleasant health. 

141 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

It is now time to come to a conclusion, good- 
bye and not for ever, write soon. — I am your 
friend in Galway. 

Write soon dear friend. 

Another letter in a more rhetorical mood. 

My dear Mr. S., — I am for a long time 
trying to spare a little time for to write a few 
words to you. 

Hoping that you are still considering good 
and pleasant health since I got a letter from 
you before. 

I see now that your time is coming round 
to come to this place to learn your native 
language. There was a great Feis in this 
island two weeks ago, and there was a very 
large attendance from the South island, and 
not very many from the North. 

Two cousins of my own have been in this 
house for three weeks or beyond it, but now 
they are gone, and there is a place for you 
if you wish to come, and you can write before 
you and we '11 try and manage you as well 
as we can. 

I am at home now for about two months, 
for the mill was burnt where I was at work. 
After that I was in Dublin, but I did not get 
my health in that city. — Mise le mor mheas ort 
a chara. 

Soon after I received this letter I wrote to 
Michael to say that I was going back to them. 
This time I chose a day when the steamer went 
142 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

direct to the middle island, and as we came up 
between the two lines of curaghs that were 
waiting outside the slip, I saw Michael, dressed 
once more in his island clothes, rowing^ in one 
of them. 

He made no sign of recognition, but as soon 
as they could get alongside he clambered on 
board and came straight up on the bridge to 
where I was. 

' Bh-fuil tu go maith? ' (' Are you well? ') 
he said. ' Where is your bag ? ' 

His curagh had got a bad place near the bow 
of the steamer, so I was slung down from a 
considerable height on top of some sacks of 
flour and my own bag, while the curagh 
swayed and battered itself against the side. 

When we were clear I asked Michael if he 
had got my letter. 

' Ah no,' he said, ' not a sight of it, but 
maybe it will come next week.' 

Part of the slip had been washed away 
during the winter, so we had to land to the 
left of it, among the rocks, taking our turn 
with the other curaghs that were coming in. 

As soon as I was on shore the men crowded 
round me to bid me welcome, asking me as 
they shook hands if I had travelled far in the 
winter, and seen many wonders, ending, as 
usual, with the inquiry if there was much war 
at present in the world. 

It gave me a thrill of delight to hear their 
Gaelic blessings, and to see the steamer moving 
away, leaving me quite alone among them. 
The day was fine with a clear sky, and the sea 

143 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

was glittering beyond the limestone. Further 
off a light haze on the cliffs of the larger island, 
and on the Connaught hills, gave me the 
illusion that it was still summer. 

A little boy was sent off to tell the old 
woman that I was coming, and we followed 
slowly talking, and carrying the baggage. 

When I had exhausted my news they told 
me theirs. A power of strangers — four or 
five — a French priest among them, had been 
on the island in the summer ; the potatoes were 
bad, but the rye had begun well, till a dry 
week came and then it had turned into oats. 

* If you didn't know us so well,' said the 
man who was talking, ' you 'd think it was a 
lie we were telling, but the sorrow a lie is in 
it. It grew straight and well till it was high 
as your knee, then it turned into oats. Did 
ever you see the like of that in County 
Wicklow ? ' 

In the cottage everything was as usual, but 
Michael's presence has brought back the old 
woman's humour and contentment. As I sat 
down on my stool and lit my pipe with the 
corner of a sod, I could have cried out with 
the feeling of festivity that this return pro- 
cured me. 

This year Michael is busy in the daytime, 
but at present there is a harvest moon, and we 
spend most of the evening wandering about 
the island, looking out over the bay where the 
shadows of the clouds throw strange patterns 
of gold and black. As we were returning 
144 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

through the village this evening a tumult of 
revelry broke out from one of the smaller 
cottages, and Michael said it was the young 
boys and girls who have sport at this time of 
the year. I would have liked to join them, but 
feared to embarrass their amusement. When 
we passed on again the groups of scattered 
cottages on each side of the^ way reminded 
me of places I have sometimes passed when 
travelling at night in France or Bavaria, 
places that seemed so enshrined in the blue 
silence of night one could not believe they 
would reawaken. 

Afterwards we went up on the Dun, where 
Michael said he had never been before after 
nightfall, though he lives within a stone's- 
throw. The place gains unexpected grandeur 
in this light, standing out like a corona of 
prehistoric stone upon the summit of the 
island. We walked round the top of the wall 
for some time looking down on the faint 
yellow roofs, with the rocks glittering beyond 
them, and the silence of the bay. Though 
Michael is sensible of the beauty of the nature 
round him, he never speaks of it directly, and 
many of our evening walks are occupied with 
long Gaelic discourses about the movements 
of the stars and moon. 

These people make no distinction between 
the natural and the supernatural. 

This afternoon — it was Sunday, when 
there is usually some interesting talk among 
the islanders — it rained, so I went into the 

145 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

schoolmaster's kitchen, which is a good deal 
frequented by the more advanced among the 
people. I know so little of their ways of 
fishing and farming that I do not find it easy 
to keep up our talk without reaching matters 
where they cannot follow me, and since the 
novelty of my photographs has passed off I 
have some difficulty in giving them the enter- 
tainment they seem to expect from my 
company. To-day I showed them some 
simple gymnastic feats and conjurer's tricks, 
which gave them great amusement. 

* Tell us now,' said an old woman when I 
had finished, * didn't you learn those things 
from the witches that do be out in the 
country ? ' 

In one of the tricks I seemed to join a piece 
of string which was cut by the people, and the 
illusion was so complete that I saw one man 
going off with it into a corner and pulling at 
the apparent joining till he sank red furrows 
round his hands. 

Then he brought it back to me. 

* Bedad,' he said, ' this is the greatest wonder 
ever I seen. The cord is a taste thinner 
where you joined it but as strong as ever it 
was.' 

A few of the younger men looked doubtful, 
but the older people, who have watched the 
rye turning into oats, seemed to accept the 
magic frankly, and did not show any surprise 
that * a duine uasal ' (a noble person) should 
be able to do like the witches. 

My intercourse with these people has made 
146 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

me realise that miracles must abound wherever 
the new conception of law is not understood. 
On these islands alone miracles enough happen 
every year to equip a divine emissary. Rye 
is turned into oats, storms are raised to keep 
evictors from the shors from the shore, cows 
that are isolated on lonely rocks bring forth 
calves, and other things of the same kind are 
common. 

The wonder is a rare expected event, like the 
thunderstorm or the rainbow, except that it is 
a little rarer and a little more wonderful. 
Often, when I am walking and get into con- 
versation with some of the people, and tell 
them that I have received a paper from Dublin, 
they ask me — 

' And is there any great wonder in the 
world at this time ? ' 

When I had finished my feats of dexterity, 
I was surprised to find that none of the 
islanders, even the youngest and most agile, 
could do what I did. As I pulled their limbs 
about in my effort to teach them, I felt that 
the ease and beauty of their movements has 
made me think them lighter than they really 
are. Seen in their curaghs between these cliffs 
and the Atlantic, they appear lithe and small, 
but if they were dressed as we are and seen 
in an ordinary room, many of them would 
seem heavily and powerfully made. 

One man, however, the champion dancer of 
the island, got up after a while and displayed 
the salmon leap — lying flat on his face and 
then spring up, horizontally, high in the air — 

147 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and some other feats of extraordinary agility, 
but he is not young and we could not get him 
to dance. 

In the evening I had to repeat my tricks 
here in the kitchen, for the fame of them had 
spread over the island. 

No doubt these feats will be remembered 
here for generations. The people have so few 
images for description that they seize on any- 
thing that is remarkable in their visitors and 
use it afterwards in their talk. 

For the last few years when they are 
speaking of any one with fine rings they say: 
' She had beautiful rings on her fingers like 
Lady ,' a visitor to the island. 

I have been down sitting on the pier till it 
was quite dark. I am only beginning to under- 
stand the nights of Inishmaan and the 
influence they have had in giving distinction 
to these men who do most of their work after 
nightfall. 

I could hear nothing but a few curlews 
and other wild-fowl whistling and shrieking 
in the seaweed, and the low rustling of the 
waves. It was one of the dark sultry nights 
peculiar to September, with no light anywhere 
except the phosphoresence of the sea, and an 
occasional rift in the clouds that showed the 
stars behind them. 

The sense of solitude was immense. I could 
not see or realise my own body, and I seemed 
to exist merely in my perception of the waves 
148 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and of the crying birds, and of the smell of 
seaweed. 

When I tried to come home I lost myself 
among the sandhills, and the night seemed to 
grow unutterably cold and dejected, as I 
groped among slimy masses of seaweed and 
wet crumbling walls. 

After a while I heard a movement in the 
sand, and two grey shadows appeared beside 
me. They were two men who were going 
home from fishing. I spoke to them and knew 
their voices, and we went home together. 

In the autumn season the threshing of the 
rye is one of the many tasks that fall to the 
men and boys. The sheaves are collected on 
a bare rock, and then each is beaten separately 
on a couple of stones placed on end one against 
the other. The land is so poor that a field 
hardly produces more grain than is needed 
for seed the following year, so the rye- 
p-rowing is carried on merely for the straw, 
which is used for thatching. 

The stooks are carried to and from the 
threshing fields, piled on donkeys that one 
meets everywhere at this season, with their 
black, unbridled heads just visible beneath a 
pinnacle of golden straw. 

While the threshing is going on sons and 
daughters keep turning up with one thing and 
another till there is a little crowd on the rocks, 
and any one who is passing stops for an hour 
or two to talk on his way to the sea, so that, 
like the kelp-burning in the summer-time, this 
149 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

work is full of sociability. 

When the threshing is over the straw is 
taken up to the cottages and piled up in an 
outhouse, or more often in a corner of the 
kitchen, where it brings a new liveliness of 
colour. 

A few days ago when I was visiting a 
cottage where there are the most beautiful 
children on the island, the eldest daughter, a 
girl of about fourteen, went and sat down on 
a heap of straw by the doorway. A ray of 
sunlight fell on her and on a portion of the 
rye, giving her figure and red dress with the 
straw under it a curious relief against the nets 
and oilskins, and forming a natural picture of 
exquisite harmony and colour. 

In our own cottage the thatching — it is 
done every year^ — has just been carried out. 
The rope-twisting was done partly in the lane, 
partly in the kitchen when the weather was 
uncertain. Two men usually sit together at 
this work, one of them hammering the straw 
with a heavy block of wood, the other forming 
the rope, the main body of which is twisted 
by a boy or girl with a bent stick specially 
formed for this employment. 

In wet weather, when the work must be 
done indoors, the person who is twisting re- 
cedes gradually out of the door, across the 
lane, and sometimes across a field or two 
beyond it. A great length is needed to form 
the close network which is spread over the 
thatch, as each piece measures about fifty 
yards. When this work is in progress in half 

150 




Thatching 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

the cottages of the village, the road has a 
curious look, and one has to pick one's steps 
through a maze of twisting ropes that pass 
from the dark doorways on either side into 
the fields. 

When four or five immense balls of rope 
have been completed, a thatching party is ar- 
ranged, and before dawn some morning they 
come down to the house, and the work is taken 
in hand with such energy that it is usually 
ended within the day. 

Like all work that is done in common on 
the island, the thatching is regarded as a sort 
of festival. From the moment a roof is taken 
in hand there is a whirl of laughter and talk 
till it is ended, and, as the man whose house is 
being covered is a host instead of an employer, 
he lays himself out to please the men who 
work with him. 

The day our own house was thatched the 
large table was taken into the kitchen from my 
room, and high teas were given every few 
hours. Most of the people who came along 
the road turned down into the kitchen for a 
few minutes, and the talking was incessant. 
Once when I went into the window I heard 
Michael retailing my astronomical lectures 
from the apex of the gable, but usually their 
topics have to do with the affairs of the island. 

It is likely that much of the intelligence and 
charm of these people is due to the absence of 
any division of labour, and to the correspond- 
ingly wide development of each individual, 
whose varied knowledge and skill necessitates 

153 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

a considerable activity of mind. Each man 
can speak two languages. He is a skilled 
fisherman, and can manage a curagh with 
traordinary nerve and dexterity. He can farm 
simply, burn kelp, cut out pampooties, mend 
nets, build and thatch a house, and make a 
cradle or a coffin. His work changes with the 
seasons in a way that keeps him free from the 
dulness that comes to people who have always 
the same occupation. The danger of his life 
on the sea gives him the alertness of the primi- 
tive hunter, and the long nights he spends 
fishing in his curagh bring him some of the 
emotions that are thought peculiar to men who 
have lived with the arts. 

As Michael is busy in the daytime, I have 
got a boy to come up and read Irish to me 
every afternoon. He is about fifteen, and is 
singularly intelligent, with a real sympathy 
for the language and the stories we read. 

One evening when he had been reading to 
me for two hours, I asked him if he was tired. 

* Tired ? ' he said, ^sure you wouldn't ever 
be tired reading ! ' 

A few years ago this predisposition for in- 
tellectual things would have made him sit with 
old people and learn their stories, but now 
boys like him turn to books and to papers in 
Irish that are sent them from Dublin. 

In most of the stories we read, where the 
English and Irish are printed side by side, 
I see him looking across to the English in 
passages that are a little obscure, though he is 

154 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

indignant if I say that he knows EngHsh better 
than Irish. Probably he knows the local Irish 
better than English, and printed English better 
than printed Irish, as the latter has frequent 
dialectic forms he does not know. 

A few days ago when he was reading a folk- 
tale from Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire, 
something caught his eye in the translation. 

' There's a mistake in the English,' he said, 
after a moment's hesitation, ' he 's put " gold 
chair " instead of " golden chair." ' 

I pointed out that we speak of gold watches 
and gold pins. 

* And why wouldn't we ? ' he said ; ' but 
" golden chair " would be much nicer.' 

It is curious to see how his rudimentary 
culture has given him the beginning of a 
critical spirit that occupies itself with the form 
of language as well as with ideas. 

One day I alluded to my trick of joining 
string. 

' You can't join a string, don't be saying it,' 
he said ; ' I don't know what way you 're 
after fooling us, but you didn't join that string, 
not a bit of you.' 

Another day when he was with me the fire 
burned low and I held up a newspaper before 
it to make a draught. It did not answer very 
well, and though the boy said nothing I saw 
he thought me a fool. 

The next day he ran up in great excitement. 

' I'm after trying the paper over the fire,' he 
said, ' and it burned grand. Didn't I think, 
when I seen you doing it there was no good in 

155 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

it at all, but I put a paper over the master's (the 
school-master's) fire and it flamed up. Then 
I pulled back the corner of the paper and I 
ran my head in, and believe me, there was a 
big cold wind blowing up the chimney that 
would sweep the head from you.' 

We nearly quarrelled because he wanted me 
to take his photograph in his Sunday clothes 
from Gal way, instead of his native homespuns 
that become him far better, though he does not 
like them as they seem to connect him with the 
primitive life of the island. With his keen 
temperament, he may go far if he can ever 
step out into the world. 

He is constantly thinking. 

One day he asked me if there was great 
wonder on their names out in the country. 

I said there was no wonder on them at all. 

* Well,' he said, ' there is great wonder on 
your name in the island, and I was thinking 
maybe there would be great wonder on our 
names out in the country.' 

In a sense he is right. Though the names 
here are ordinary enough, they are used in a 
way that differs altogether from the modern 
system of surnames. 

When a child begins to wander about the 
island, the neighbours speak of it by its 
Christian name, followed by the Christian 
name of its father. If this is not enough to 
identify it, the father's epithet — whether it is 
a nickname or the name of his own father — 
is added. 

Sometimes when the father's name does not 

156 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

lend itself, the mother's Christian name is 
adopted as epithet for the children. 

An old woman near this cottage is called 

* Peggeen,' and her sons are ' Patch Pheggeen,' 

* Seaghan Pheggeen,' etc. 

Occasionally the surname is employed in its 
Irish form, but I have not heard them using 
the * Mac ' prefix when speaking Irish among 
themselves; perhaps the idea of a surname 
which it gives is too modern for them, perhaps 
they do use it at times that I have not noticed. 

Sometimes a man is named from the colour 
of his hair. There is thus a Seaghan Ruadh 
(Red John), and his children are ' Mourteen 
Seaghan Ruadh,' etc. 

Another man is known as ' an iasgaire ' 
(' the fisher '), and his children are * Maire an 
iasgaire' ('Mary daughter of the fisher'), 
and so on. 

The schoolmaster tells me that when he 
reads out the roll in the morning the children 
repeat the local name all together in a whisper 
after each official name, and then the child 
answers. If he calls, for instance, ' Patrick 
O'Flaharty,' the children murmur, ' Patch 
Seaghan Dearg ' or some such name, and the 
boy answers. 

People who come to the island are treated 
in much the same way. A French Gaelic 
student was in the islands recently, and he is 
always spoken of as ' An Saggart Ruadh ' 
(' the red priest ') or as 'An Saggart Franc- 
ach ' ('the French priest'), but never by his 
name. 

157 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

If an islander's name alone is enough to dis- 
tinguish him it is used by itself, and I know 
one man who is spoken of as Eamonn. There 
may be other Edmunds on the island, but if so 
they have probably good nicknames or epithets 
of their own. 

In other countries where the names are in a 
somewhat similar condition, as in modern 
Greece, the man's calling is usually one of the 
most common means of distinguishing him, 
but in this place, where all have the same 
calling, this means is not available. 

Late this evening I saw a three-oared curagh 
with two old women in her besides the rowers, 
landing at the slip through a heavy roll. They 
were coming from Inishere, and they rowed 
up quickly enough till they were within a few 
yards of the surf -line, where they spun round 
and waited with the prow towards the sea, 
while wave after wave passed underneath them 
and broke on the remains of the slip. Five 
minutes passed; ten minutes; and still they 
waited with the oars just paddling in the water, 
and their heads turned over their shoulders. 

I was beginning to think that they would 
have to give up and row round to the lee side 
of the island, when the curagh seemed suddenly 
to turn into a living thing. The prow was 
again towards the slip, leaping and hurling 
itself through the spray. Before it touched, 
the man in the bow wheeled round, two white 
legs came out over the prow like the flash of 
a sword, and before the next wave arrived he 
had dragged the curagh out of danger. 

158 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

This sudden and united action in men 
without discipline shows well the education 
that the waves have given them. When the 
curagh was in safety the two old women were 
carried up through the surf and slippery sea- 
weed on the backs of their sons. 

In this broken weather a curagh cannot go 
out without danger, yet accidents are rare and 
seem to be nearly always caused by drink. 
Since I was here last year four men have been 
drowned on their way home from the large 
island. First a curagh belonging to the south 
island which put off with two men in her 
heavy with drink, came to shore here the next 
evening dry and uninjured, with the sail half 
set, and no one in her. 

More recently a curagh from this island 
with three men, who were the worse for drink, 
was upset on its way home. The steamer was 
not far off, and saved two of the men, but 
could not reach the third. 

Now a man has been washed ashore in 
Donegal with one pampooty on him, and a 
striped shirt with a purse in one of the pockets, 
and a box for tobacco. 

For three days the people have been trying 
to fix his identity. Some think it is the man 
from this island, others think that the man 
from the south answers the description more 
exactly. To-night as we were returning from 
the slip we met the mother of the man who 
was drowned from this island, still weeping 
and looking out over the sea. She stopped the 

159 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

people who had come over from the south 
island to ask them with a terrified whisper 
what is thought over there. 

Later in the evening, when I was sitting in 
one of the cottages, the sister of the dead man 
came in through the rain with her infant, and 
there was a long talk about the rumours that 
had come in. She pieced together all she 
could remember about his clothes, and what 
his purse was like, and where he had got it, 
and the same for his tobacco box, and his 
stockings. In the end there seemed little 
doubt that it was her brother. 

' Ah ! ' she said, ' It 's Mike sure enough, 
and please God they '11 give him a decent 
burial.' 

Then she began to keen slowly to herself. 
She had loose yellow hair plastered round her 
head with the rain, and as she sat by the door 
sucking her infant, she seemed like a type of 
the women's life upon the islands. 

For a while the people sat silent, and one 
could hear nothing but the lips of the infant, 
the rain hissing in the yard, and the breathing 
of four pigs that lay sleeping in one corner. 
Then one of the men began to talk about the 
new boats that have been sent to the south 
island, and the conversation went back to its 
usual round of topics. 

The loss of one man seems a slight 
catastrophe to all except the immediate rela- 
tives. Often when an accident happens a 
father is lost with his two eldest sons, or in 
1 60 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

some other way all the active men of a house- 
hold die together. 

A few years ago three men of a family that 
used to make the wooden vessels — like tiny 
barrels — that are still used among the people, 
went to the big island together. They were 
drowned on their way home, and the art of 
making these little barrels died with them, 
at least on Inishmaan, though it still lingers 
in the north and south islands. 

Another catastrophe that took place last 
winter gave a curious zest to the observance 
of holy days. It seems that it is not the 
custom for the men to go out fishing on the 
evening of a holy day, but one night last 
December some men, who wished to begin 
fishing early the next morning, rowed out to 
sleep in their hookers. 

Towards morning a terrible storm rose, 
and several hookers with their crews on board 
were blown from their moorings and wrecked. 
The sea was so high that no attempt at rescue 
could be made, and the men were drowned. 

* Ah ! ' said the man who told me the story, 
* I 'm thinking it will be a long time before 
men will go out again on a holy day. That 
storm was the only storm that reached into the 
harbour the whole winter, and I 'm thinking 
there was something in it.* 

Today when I went down to the slip I found 
a pig- jobber from Kilronan with about twenty 
pigs that were to be shipped for the English 
market. 

i6i 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

When the steamer was getting near, the 
whole drove was moved down on the slip and 
the curaghs were carried out close to the sea. 
Then each beast was caught in its turn and 
thrown on its side, while its legs were hitched 
together in a single knot, with a tag of rope 
remaining, by which it could be carried. 

Probably the pain inflicted was not great, 
yet the animals shut their eyes and shrieked 
with almost human intonations, till the sug- 
gestion of the noise became so intense that the 
men and women who were merely looking on 
grew wild with excitement, and the pigs 
waiting their turn foamed at the mouth and 
tore each other with their teeth. 

After a while there was a pause. The whole 
slip was covered with a mass of sobbing 
animals, with here and there a terrified woman 
crouching among the bodies, and patting some 
special favourite to keep it quiet while the 
curaghs were being launched. 

Then the screaming began again while the 
pigs were carried out and laid in their places, 
with a waistcoat tied round their feet to keep 
them from damaging the canvas. They 
seemed to know where they were going, and 
looked up at me over the gunnel with an 
ignoble desperation that made me shudder to 
think that I had eaten of this whimpering 
flesh. When the last curagh went out I was 
left on the slip with a band of women and 
children, and one old boar who sat looking 
out over the sea. 

The women were over-excited, and when I 
162 



rHE ARAN ISLANDS 

tried to talk to them they crowded round me 
and began jeering and shrieking at me because 
I am not married. A dozen screamed at a 
time, and so rapidly that I could not under- 
stand all they were saying, yet I was able to 
make out that they were taking advantage of 
the absence of their husbands to give me the 
full volume of their contempt. Some little 
boys who were listening threw themselves 
down, writhing with laughter among the sea- 
weed, and the young girls grew red with 
embarrassment and stared down into the surf. 

For a moment I was in confusion. I tried 
to speak to them, but I could not make myself 
heard, so I sat down on the slip and drew out 
my wallet of photographs. In an instant I 
had the whole band clambering round me, in 
their ordinary mood. 

When the curaghs came back — one of 
them towing a large kitchen table that stood 
itself up on the waves and then turned somer- 
saults in an extraordinary manner word 

went round that the ceannuighe (pedlar) was 
arriving. 

He opened his wares on the slip as soon as 
he landed, and sold a quantity of cheap knives 
and jewellery to the girls and younger women. 
He spoke no Irish, and the bargaining gave 
immense amusement to the crowd that col- 
lected round him. 

I was surprised to notice that several women 
who professed to know no English could make 
themselves understood without difficulty when 
it pleased them. 

163 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* The rings is too dear at you, sir/ said one 
girl using the GaeHc construction ; ' let you put 
less money on them and all the girls will be 
buying.' 

After the jewellery he displayed some cheap 
religious pictures — abominable oleographs — 
but I did not see many buyers. 

I am told that most of the pedlars who come 
here are Germans or Poles, but I did not have 
occasion to speak with this man by himself. 

I have come over for a few days to the 
south island, and, as usual, my voyage was 
not favourable. 

The morning was fine, and seemed to 
promise one of the peculiarly hushed, pellucid 
days that occur sometimes before rain in early 
winter. From the first gleam of dawn the 
sky was covered with white cloud, and the 
tranquility was so complete that every sound 
seemed to float away by itself across the silence 
of the bay. Lines of blue smoke were going 
up in spirals over the village, and further off 
heavy fragments of rain-cloud were lying on 
the horizon. We started early in the day, and, 
although the sea looked calm from a distance, 
we met a considerable roll coming from the 
south-west when we got out from the shore. 

Near the middle of the sound the man who 
was rowing in the bow broke his oar-pin, and 
the proper management of the canoe became 
a matter of some difficulty. We had only a 
three-oared curagh, and if the sea had gone 
much higher we should have run a good deal 

164 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

of danger. Our progress was so slow that 
clouds came up with a rise in the wind before 
we reached the shore, and rain began to fall 
in large single drops. The black curagh 
working slowly through this world of grey, 
and the soft hissing of the rain gave me one 
of the moods in which we realise with immense 
distress the short moment we have left us to 
experience all the wonder and beauty of the 
world. 

The approach to the south island is made at 
a fine sandy beach on the north-west. This 
interval in the rocks is of great service to the 
people, but the tract of wet sand with a few 
hideous fishermen's houses, lately built on it, 
looks singularly desolate in broken weather. 

The tide was going out when we landed, so 
we merely stranded the curagh and went up to 
the little hotel. The cess-collector was at work 
in one of the rooms, and there were a number 
of men and boys waiting about, who stared at 
us while we stood at the door and talked to the 
proprietor. 

When we had had our drink I went down 
to the sea with my men, who were in a hurry 
to be off. Some time was spent in replacing 
the oar-pin, and then they set out, though the 
wind was still increasing. A good many 
fishermen came down to see the start, and long 
after the curagh was out of sight I stood and 
talked with them in Irish, as I was anxious 
to compare their language and temperament 
with what I knew of the other island. 

The language seems to be identical, though 

165 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

some of these men speak rather more dis- 
tinctly than any Irish speakers I have yet 
heard. In physical type, dress, and general 
character, however, there seems to be a con- 
siderable difference. The people on this island 
are more advanced than their neighbors, and 
the families here are gradually forming into 
different ranks, made up of the well-to-do, the 
struggling, and the quite poor and thriftless. 
These distinctions are present in the middle 
island also, but over there they have had no 
effect on the people, among whom there is still 
absolute equality. 

A little later the steamer came in sight and 
lay to in the offing. While the curaghs were 
being put out I noticed in the crowd several 
men of the ragged, humorous type that was 
once thought to represent the real peasant of 
Ireland. Rain was now falling heavily, and 
as we looked out through the fog there was 
something nearly appalling in the shrieks of 
laughter kept up by one of these individuals, 
a man of extraordinary ugliness and wit. 

At last he moved off toward the houses, 
wiping his eyes with the tail of his coat and 
moaning to himself ' Ta me marbh,' (' I 'm 
killed ' ) , till some one stopped him and he 
began again pouring out a medley of rude 
puns and jokes that meant more than they 
said. 

There is quaint humour, and sometimes 
wild humour, on the middle island, but never 
this half -sensual ecstasy of laughter. Perhaps 
a man must have a sense of intimate misery, 

1 66 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

not known there, before he can set himself to 
jeer and mock at the world. These strange 
men with receding foreheads, high cheek- 
bones, and ungovernable eyes seem to repre- 
sent some old type found on these few acres 
at the extreme border of Europe, where it is 
only in wild jests and laughter that they can 
express their loneliness and desolation. 

The mode of reciting ballads in this island 
is singularly harsh. I fell in with a curious 
man to-day beyond the east village, and we 
wandered out on the rocks towards the sea. 
A wintry shower came on while we were 
together, and we crouched down in the 
bracken, under a loose wall. When we had 
gone through the usual topics he asked me if 
I was fond of songs, and began singing to 
show what he could do. 

The music was much like what I have heard 
before on the islands — a monotonous chant 
with pauses on the high and low notes to mark 
the rhythm; but the harsh nasal tone in which 
he sang was almost intolerable. His perform- 
ance reminded me in general effect of a chant 
I once heard from a party of Orientals I was 
travelling with in a third-class carriage from 
Paris to Dieppe, but the islander ran his voice 
over a much wider range. 

His pronunciation was lost in the rasping 
of his throat, and, though he shrieked into 
my ear to make sure that I understood him 
above the howling of the wind, I could only 
make out that it was an endless ballad telling 
167 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

tHe fortune of a young man who went to sea, 
and had many adventures. The English 
nautical terms were employed continually in 
describing his life on the ship, but the man 
seemed to feel that they were not in their 
place, and stopped short when one of them 
occurred to give me a poke with his finger and 
explain gib, topsail, and bowsprit, which were 
for me the most intelligible features of the 
poem. Again, when the scene changed to 
Dublin, ' glass of whiskey,' ' public-house,' and 
such things were in English. 

When the shower was over he showed me 
a curious cave hidden among the cliffs, a short 
distance from the sea. On our way back he 
asked me the three questions I am met with 
on every side — whether I am a rich man, 
whether I am married, and whether I have 
ever seen a poorer place than these islands. 

When he heard that I was not married he 
urged me to come back in the summer so that 
he might take me over in a curagh to the Spa 
in County Clare, where there is ' spree mor 
agus go leor ladies ' (* a big spree and plenty 
of ladies '). 

Something about the man repelled me while 
I was with him, and though I was cordial and 
liberal he seemed to feel that I abhorred him. 
We arranged to meet again in the evening, 
but when I dragged myself with an inexpli- 
cable loathing to the place of meeting, there 
was no trace of him. 

It is characteristic that this man, who is 
probably a drunkard and shebeener and cer- 
i68 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

tainly in penury, refused the chance of a 
shilling because he felt that I did not like him. 
He had a curiously mixed expression of 
hardness and melancholy. Probably his 
character has given him a bad reputation on 
the island, and he lives here with the restless- 
ness of a man who has no sympathy with his 
companions. 

I have come over again to Inishmaan, and 
this time I had fine weather for my passage. 
The air was full of luminous sunshine from 
the early morning, and it was almost a 
summer's day when I set sail at noon with 
Michael and two other men who had come 
over for me in a curagh. 

The wind was in our favour, so the sail 
was put up and Michael sat in the stern to 
steer with an oar while I rowed with the 
others. 

We had had a good dinner and drink and 
were wrought up by this sudden revival of 
summer to a dreamy voluptuous gaiety, that 
made us shout with exultation to hear our 
voices passing out across the blue twinkling 
of the sea. 

Even after the people of the south island, 
these men of the Inishmaan seemed to be 
moved by strange archaic sympathies with 
the world. Their mood accorded itself with 
wonderful fineness to the suggestions of the 
day, and their ancient Gaelic seemed so full 
of divine simplicity that I would have liked to 

169 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

turn the prow to the west and row with them 
for ever. 

I told them I was going back to Paris in a 
few days to sell my books and my bed, and 
that then I was coming back to grow as 
strong and simple as they were among the 
islands of the west. 

When our excitement sobered down, 
Michael told me that one of the priests had 
left his gun at our cottage and given me leave 
to use it till he returned to the island. There 
was another gun and a ferret in the house 
also, and he said that as soon as we got home 
he was going to take me out fowling on 
rabbits. 

A little later in the day we set off, and I 
nearly laughed to see Michael's eagerness that 
I should turn out a good shot. 

We put the ferret down in a crevice between 
two bare sheets of rock, and waited. In a few 
minutes we heard rushing paws underneath 
us, then a rabbit shot up straight into the air 
from the crevice at our feet and set off for a 
wall that was a few feet away. I threw up 
the gun and fired. 

' Buail tu e,' screamed Michael at my elbow 
as he ran up the rock. I had killed it. 

We shot seven or eight more in the next 
hour, and Michael was immensely pleased. If 
I had done badly I think I should have had 
to leave the islands. The people would have 
despised me. A * duine uasal ' who cannot 
shoot seems to these descendants of hunters a 
fallen type who is worse than an apostate. 
170 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

The women of this island are before con- 
ventionality, and share some of the liberal 
features that are thought peculiar to the 
women of Paris and New York. 

Many of them are too contented and too 
sturdy to have more than a decorative 
interest, but there are others full of curious 
individuality. 

This year I have got to know a wonderfully 
humorous girl, who has been spinning in the 
kitchen for the last few days with the old 
woman's spinning-wheel. The morning she 
began I heard her exquisite intonation almost 
before I awoke, brooding and cooing over 
every syllable she uttered. 

I have heard something similar in the voices 
of German and Polish women, but I do not 
think men — at least European men — who 
are always further than women from the 
simple, animal emotions, or any speakers who 
use languages with weak gutturals, like French 
or English, can produce this inarticulate chant 
in their ordinary talk. 

She plays continual tricks with her Gaelic 
in the way girls are fond of, piling up 
diminutives and repeating adjectives with a 
humorous scorn of syntax. While she is here 
the talk never stops in the kitchen. To-day 
she has been asking me many questions about 
Germany, for it seems one of her sisters 
married a German husband in America some 
years ago, who kept her in great comfort, with 
a fine ' capull glas ' (' grey horse ') to ride on, 
171 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and this girl has decided to escape in the same 
way from the drudgery of the island. 

This was my last evening on my stool in 
the chimney corner, and I had a long talk with 
some neighbors who came in to bid me pros- 
perity, and lay about on the floor with their 
heads on low stools and their feet stretched 
out to the embers of the turf. The old woman 
was at the other side of the fire, and the girl 
I have spoken of was standing at her spinning- 
wheel, talking and joking with every one. She 
says when I go away now I am to marry a 
rich wife with plenty of money, and if she 
dies on me I am to come back here and marry 
herself for my second wife. 

I have never heard talk so simple and so 
attractive as the talk of these people. This 
evening they began disputing about their 
wives, and it appeared that the greatest merit 
they see in a woman is that she should be 
fruitful and bring them many children. As 
no money can be earned by children on the 
island this one attitude shows the immense 
difference between these people and the people 
of Paris. 

The direct sexual instincts are not weak on 
the island, but they are so subordinated to the 
instincts of the family that they rarely lead 
to irregularity. The life here is still at an 
almost patriarchal stage, and the people are 
nearly as far from the romantic moods of love 
as they are from the impulsive life of the 
savage. 

172 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

The wind was so high this morning that 
there was some doubt whether the steamer 
would arrive, and I spent half the day wander- 
ing about with Michael watching the horizon. 

At last, when we had given her up, she 
came in sight far away to the north, where 
she had gone to have the wind with her 
where the sea was at its highest. 

I got my baggage from the cottage and set 
off for the slip with Michael and the old man, 
turning into a cottage here and there to say 
good-bye. 

In spite of the wind outside, the sea at the 
slip was as calm as a pool. The men who 
were standing about while the steamer was at 
the south island wondered for the last time 
whether I would be married when I came 
back to see them. Then we pulled out and 
took our place in the line. As the tide was 
running hard the steamer stopped a certain 
distance from the shore, and gave us a long 
race for good places at her side. In the 
struggle we did not come off well, so I had to 
clamber across two curaghs, twisting and 
fumbling with the roll, in order to get on 
board. 

It seemed strange to see the curaghs full of 
well-known faces turning back to the slip 
without me, but the roll in the sound soon took 
off my attention. Some men were on board 
whom I had seen on the south island, and a 
good many Kilronan people on their way 
home from Galway, who told me that in one 

173 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

part of their passage in the morning they had 
come in for heavy seas. 

As is usual on Saturday, the steamer had a 
large cargo of flour and porter to discharge 
at Kilronan, and, as it was nearly four o'clock 
before the tide could float her at the pier, I 
felt some doubt about our passage to Galway. 

The wind increased as the afternoon went 
on, and when I came down in the twilight I 
found that the cargo was not yet all unladen, 
and that the captain feared to face the gale 
that was rising. It was some time before he 
came to a final decision, and we walked back- 
wards and forwards from the village with 
heavy clouds flying overhead and the wind 
howling in the walls. At last he telegraphed 
to Galway to know if he was wanted the next 
day, and we went into a public-house to wait 
for the reply. 

The kitchen was filled with men sitting 
closely on long forms ranged in lines at each 
side of the fire. A wild-looking but beautiful 
girl was kneeling on the hearth talking loudly 
to the men, and a few natives of Inishmaan 
were hanging about the door, miserably drunk. 
At the end of the kitchen the bar was 
arranged, with a sort of alcove beside it, 
where some older men were playing cards. 
Overhead there were the open rafters, filled 
with turf and tobabbo smoke. 

This is the haunt so much dreaded by the 
women of the other islands, where the men 
linger with their money till they go out at last 
with reeling steps and are lost in the sound- 

174 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Without this background of empty curaghs, 
and bodies floating naked with the tide, there 
would be something almost absurd about the 
dissipation of this simple place where men 
sit, evening after evening, drinking bad 
whiskey and porter, and talking with endless 
repetition of fishing, and kelp, and of the 
sorrows of purgatory. 

When we had finished our whiskey word 
came that the boat might remain. 

With some difficulty I got my bags out of 
the steamer and carried them up through the 
crowd of women and donkeys that were still 
struggling on the quay in an inconceivable 
medley of flour-bags and cases of petroleum. 
When I reached the inn the old woman was 
in great good humour, and I spent some time 
talking by the kitchen fire. Then I groped 
my way back to the harbour, where, I was 
told, the old net-mender, who came to see me 
on my first visit to the islands, was spending 
the night as watchman. 

It was quite dark on the pier, and a terrible 
gale was blowing. There was no one in the 
little office where I expected to find him, so 
I groped my way further on towards a figure 
I saw moving with a lantern. 

It was the old man, and he remembered me 
at once when I hailed him and told him who 
I was. He spent some time arranging one of 
his lanterns, and then he took me back to 
his office — a mere shed of planks and cor- 
rugated iron, put up for the contractor of 
some work which is in progress on the pier. 

175 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

When we reached the Hght I saw that his 
head was rolled up in an extraordinary collec- 
tion of mufflers to keep him from the cold, 
and that his face was much older than when 
I saw him before, though still full of 
intelligence. 

He began to tell how he had gone to see a 
relative of mine in Dublin when he first left 
the island as a cabin-boy, between forty and 
fifty years ago. 

He told his story with the usual detail:— 

We saw a man walking about on the quay in 
Dublin, and looking at us without saying a 
word. Then he came down to the yacht. 

' Are you the men from Aran ? ' said he. 

' We are,' said we. 

* You 're to come with me so,' said he. 

' Why ? ' said we. 

Then he told us it was Mr. Synge had sent 
him and we went with him. Mr. Synge 
brought us into his kitchen and gave the men 
a glass of whisky all round, and a half-glass 
to me because I was a boy — though at that 
time and to this day I can drink as much as 
two men and not be the worse of it. We were 
some time in the kitchen, then one of the men 
said we should be going. I said it would not 
be right to go without saying a word to Mr. 
Synge. Then the servant-girl went up and 
brought him down, and he gave us another 
glass of whisky, and he gave me a book in 
Irish because I was going to sea, and I was 
able to read in the Irish. 
176 




Porter 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I owe it to Mr. Synge and that book that 
when I came back here, after not hearing a 
word of Irish for thirty years, I had as good 
Irish, or maybe better Irish, than any person 
on the island. 

I could see all through his talk that the 
sense of superiority which his scholarship in 
this little-known language gave him above the 
ordinary seaman, had influenced his whole 
personality and been the central interest of 
his life. 

On one voyage he had a fellow-sailor who 
often boasted that he had been at school and 
learned Greek, and this incident took place : — 

One night we had a quarrel, and I asked 
him could he read a Greek book with all his 
talk of it. 

' I can so,' said he. 

' We '11 see that,' said I. 

Then I got the Irish book out of my chest, 
and I gave it into his hand. 

' Read that to me,' said I, ' if you know 
Greek.' 

He took it, and he looked at it this way, and 
that way, and not a bit of him could make it 
out. 

* Bedad, I've forgotten my Greek,' said he. 

* You 're telling a lie,' said I. 

' I 'm not,' said he ; 'it 's the divil a bit I 
can read it.' 

Then I took the book back into my hand, 
and said to him — 

* It 's the sorra a word of Greek you ever 

179 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

knew in your life, for there 's not a word of 
Greek in that book, and not a bit of you 
knew.' 

He told me another story of the only time 
he had heard Irish spoken during his. 
voyages : — 

One night I was in New York, walking in 
the streets with some other men, and we came 
upon two women quarreling in Irish at the 
door of a public-house. 

' What 's that jargon? ' said one of the men.. 

' It 's no jargon,' said I. 

' What is it ? ' said he. 

' It 's Irish,' said I. 

Then I went up to them, and you know, 
sir, there is no language like the Irish for 
soothing and quieting. The moment I spoke 
to them they stopped scratching and swearing 
and stood there as quiet as two lambs. 

Then they asked me in Irish if I wouldn't 
come in and have a drink, and I said I couldn't 
leave my mates. 

* Bring them too,' said they. 

Then we all had a drop together. 

While we were talking another man had: 
slipped in and sat down in the corner with his 
pipe, and the rain had become so heavy we 
could hardly hear our voices over the noise 
on the iron roof. 

The old man went on telling of his ex- 
periences at sea and the places he had been to. 
1 80 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

' If I had my life to live over again,' he 
said, ' there 's no other way I 'd spend it. I 
went in and out everywhere and saw every- 
thing. I was never afraid to take my glass, 
though I was never drunk in my life, and I 
was a great player of cards though I never 
played for money.' 

' There 's no diversion at all in cards if you 
don't play for money,' said the man in the 
corner. 

' There was no use in my playing for 
money,' said the old man, ' for I 'd always 
lose, and what 's the use in playing if you 
always lose ? ' 

Then our conversation branched off to the 
Irish language and the books written in it. 

He began to criticise Archbishop MacHale's 
version of Moore's Irish Melodies with great 
severity and acuteness, citing whole poems 
both in the English and Irish, and then giving 
versions that he had made himself. 

' A translation is no translation,' he said, 
* unless it will give you the music of a poem 
along with the words of it. In my trans- 
lation you won't find a foot or a syllable 
that 's not in the English, yet I 've put down 
all his words mean, and nothing but it. Arch- 
bishop MacHale's work is a most miserable 
production.' 

From the verses he cited his judgment 
seemed perfectly justified, and even if he was 
wrong, it is interesting to note that this poor 
sailor and night-watchman was ready to rise 
up and criticise an eminent dignitary and 
i8i 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

scholar on rather deHcate points of versifica- 
tion and the finer distinctions between old 
words of Gaelic. 

In spite of his singular intelligence and 
minute observation his reasoning was mediae- 
val. 

I asked him what he thought about the 
future of the language on these islands. 

' It can never die out/ said he, * because 
there 's no family in the place can live without 
a bit of a field for potatoes, and they have 
only the Irish words for all that they do in 
the fields. They sail their new boats — their 
hookers — in English, but they sail a curagh 
oftener in Irish, and in the fields they have 
the Irish alone. It can never die out, and 
when the people begin to see it fallen very 
low, it will rise up again like the phoenix from 
its own ashes.' 

' And the Gaelic League ? ' I asked him. 

' The Gaelic League ! Didn't they come 
down here with their organisers and their 
secretaries, and their meetings and their 
speechifyings, and start a branch of it, and 
teach a power of Irish for five weeks and a 
halfl'i 

' What do we want here with their teaching 
Irish ? ' said the man in the corner ; ' haven't 
we Irish enough ? ' 

' You have not,' said the old man ; ^there 's 
not a soul in Aran can count up to nine 
hundred and ninety-nine without using an 
English word but myself.' 
182 



■ THE ARAN ISLANDS 

i It was getting late, and the rain had lessened 

for a moment, so I groped my way back to 
the inn through the intense darkness of a late 
autumn night. 

*This was written, it should be remembered, some 
years ago. 



183 



PART IV 

No two journeys to these islands are alike. 
This morning I sailed with the steamer a little 
after five o'clock in a cold night air, with the 
stars shining on the bay. A number of 
Claddagh fishermen had been out all night 
fishing not far from the harbour, and with- 
out thinking, or perhaps caring to think, of 
the steamer, they had put out their nets in the 
channel where she was to pass. Just before 
we started the mate sounded the steam 
whistle repeatedly to give them warning, say- 
ing as he did so — 

' If you were out now in the bay, gentlemen, 
you'd hear some fine prayers being said.' 

When we had gone a little way we began 
to see the light from the turf fires carried by 
the fishermen flickering on the water, and to 
hear a faint noise of angry voices. Then the 
outline of a large fishing-boat came in sight 
through the darkness, with the forms of three 
men who stood on the course. The captain 
feared to turn aside, as there are sandbanks 
near the channel, so the engines were stopped 
and we glided over the nets without doing 
them harm. As we passed close to the boat 
the crew could be seen plainly on the deck, 
one of them holding the bucket of red turf, 
and their abuse could be distinctly heard. It 
184 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

changed continually, from profuse Gaelic 
maledictions to the simpler curses the}^ know- 
in English. As they spoke they could be seen 
writhing and twisting themselves with passion 
against the light which was beginning to turn 
on the ripple of the sea. Soon afterwards 
another set of voices began in front of us, 
breaking out in strange contrast with the 
dwindling stars and the silence of the dawn. 
Further on we passed many boats that let 
us go by without a word, as their nets were 
not in the channel. Then day came on rapidly 
with cold showers that turned golden in the 
first rays from the sun, filling the troughs of 
the sea with curious transparencies and light. 

This year I have brought my fiddle with me 
so that I may have something new to keep up 
the interest of the people. I have played for 
them several tunes, but as far as I can judge 
they do not feel modern music, though they 
listen eagerly from curiosity. Irish airs like 
' Eileen Aroon ' please them better, but it is 
only when I play some jig like the * Black 
Rogue ' — ^which is known on the island — that 
they seem to respond to the full meaning of 
the notes. Last night I played for a large 
crowd, which had come together for another 
purpose from all parts of the island. 

About six o'clock I was going into the 
schoolmaster's house, and I heard a fierce 
wrangle going on between a man and a woman 
near the cottages to the west, that lie below the 
road. While I was listening to them several 

185 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

women came down to listen also from behind 
the wall, and told me that the people who were 
fighting were near relations who lived side 
by side and often quarrelled about trifles, 
though they were as good friends as ever the 
next day. The voices sounded so enraged 
that I thought mischief would come of it, but 
the women laughed at the idea. Then a lull 
came, and I said that they seemed to have 
finished at last. 

* Finished ! ' said one of the women ; * sure 
they haven't rightly begun. It's only playing 
they are yet.' 

It was just after sunset and the evening 
was bitterly cold, so I went into the house and 
left them. 

An hour later the old man came down from 
my cottage to say that some of the lads and 
the * fear lionta ' (* the man of the nets ' — a 
young man from Aranmor who is teaching 
net-mending to the boys) were up at the house, 
and had sent him down to tell me they would 
like to dance, if I would come up and play for 
them. 

I went out at once, and as soon as I came 
into the air I heard the dispute going on still 
to the west more violently than ever. The 
news of it had gone about the island, and little 
bands of girls and boys were running along 
the lanes towards the scene of the quarrel as 
eagerly as if they were going to a racecourse. 
I stopped for a few minutes at the door of our 
cottage to listen to the volume of abuse that 
was rising across the stillness of the island. 

i86 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Then I went into the kitchen and began tuning 
the fiddle, as the boys were impatient for my 
music. At first I tried to play standing, but 
on the upward stroke my bow came in contact 
with the salt-fish and oil-skins that hung from 
the rafters, so I settled myself at last on a 
table in the corner, where I was out of the 
way, and got one of the people to hold up my 
music before me, as I had no stand. I played 
a French melody first, to get myself used to 
the people and the qualities of the room, which 
has little resonance between the earth floor 
and the thatch overhead. Then I struck up 
the ' Black Rogue,' and in a moment a tall man 
bounded out from his stool under the chimney 
and began flying round the kitchen with 
peculiarly sure and graceful bravado. 

The lightness of the pampooties seems to 
make the dancing on this island lighter and 
swifter than anything I have seen on the main- 
land, and the simplicity of the men enables 
them to throw a naive extravagance into their 
steps that is impossible in places where the 
people are self-conscious. 

The speed, however, was so violent that I 
had some difHculty in keeping up, as my 
fingers were not in practice, and I could not 
take off more than a small part of my attention 
to watch what was going on. When I finished 
I heard a commotion at the door, and the 
whole body of people who had gone down to 
watch the quarrel filed into the kitchen and 
arranged themselves around the walls, the 
women and girls, as is usual, forming them- 

187 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

selves in one compact mass crouching on their 
heels near the door. 

I struck up another dance — ' Paddy get up ' 
— and the ' fear lionta ' and the first dancer 
went through it together, with additional 
rapidity and grace, as they were excited by the 
presence of the people who had come in. Then 
word went round that an old man, known as 
Little Roger, was outside, and they told me he 
was once the best dancer on the island. 

For a long time he refused to come in, for 
he said he was too old to dance, but at last 
he was persuaded, and the people brought 
him in and gave him a stool opposite me. It 
was some time longer before he would take 
his turn, and when he did so, though he was 
met with great clapping of hands, he only 
danced for a few moments. He did not know 
the dances in my book, he said, and did not 
care to dance to music he was not familiar 
with. When the people pressed him again 
he looked across to me. 

' John,' he said, in shaking English, * have 
you got " Larry Grogan," for it is an agree- 
able air ? ' 

I had not, so some of the young men danced 
again to the ' Black Rogue,' and then the party 
broke up. The altercation was still going on 
at the cottage below us, and the people were 
anxious to see what was coming of it. 

About ten o'clock a young man came in 
and told us that the fight was over. 

* They have been at it for four hours,' he 
said, * and now they 're tired. Indeed it is 
i88 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

time they were, for you 'd rather be Hstening 
to a man kilHng a pig than to the noise they 
were letting out of them.' 

After the dancing and excitement we were 
too stirred up to be sleepy, so we sat for a 
long time round the embers of the turf, talking 
and smoking by the light of the candle. 

From ordinary music we came to talk of 
the music of the fairies, and they told me this 
story, when I had told them some stories of 
my own : — 

A man who lives in the other end of the 
village got his gun one day and went out to 
look for rabbits in a thicket near the small 
Dun. He saw a rabbit sitting up under a tree, 
and he lifted his gun to take aim at it, but just 
as he had it covered he heard a kind of music 
over his head, and he looked up into the sky. 
When he looked back for the rabbit, not a bit 
of it was to be seen. 

He went on after that, and he heard the 
music again. 

Then he looked over a wall, and he saw a 
rabbit sitting up by the wall with a sort of 
flute in its mouth, and it playing on it with 
its two fingers! 

'What sort of rabbit was that?' said the 
old woman when they had finished. * How 
could that be a right rabbit? I remember old 
Pat Dirane used to be telling us he was once 
out on the clifTs, and he saw a big rabbit sitting 
down in a hole under a flagstone. He called 
189 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

a man who was with him, and they put a hook 
on the end of a stick and ran it down into the 
hole. Then a voice called up to them — 

' " Ah, Phaddrick, don't hurt me with the 
hook!"' 

* Pat was a great rogue,' said the old man. 
* Maybe you remember the bits of horns he 
had like handles on the end of his sticks? 
Well, one day there was a priest over and he 
said to Pat — 

* "Is it the devil's horns you have on your 
sticks, Pat?" 

'"I don't rightly know," said Pat, "but 
if it is, it 's the devil's milk you 've been 
drinking, since you 've been able to drink, and 
the devil's flesh you 've been eating and the 
devil's butter you 've been putting on your 
bread, for I 've seen the like of them horns on 
every old cow through the country." * 

The weather has been rough, but early this 
afternoon the sea was calm enough for a 
hooker to come in with turf from Connemara, 
though while she was at the pier the roll was 
so great that the men had to keep a watch on 
the waves and loosen the cable whenever a 
large one was coming in, so that she might 
ease up with the water. 

There were only two men on board, and 
when she was empty they had some trouble in 
dragging in the cables, hoisting the sails, and 
getting out of the harbour before they could 
be blown on the rocks. 

A heavy shower came on soon afterwards, 
190 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and I lay down under a stack of turf with 
some people who were standing about, to 
wait for another hooker that was coming in 
with horses. They began talking and laugh- 
ing about the dispute last night and the noise 
made at it. 

' The worst fights do be made here over 
nothing/ said an old man next me. * Did 
Mourteen or any of them on the big island 
ever tell you of the fight they had there three- 
score years ago when they were killing each 
other with knives out on the strand ? ' 

' They never told me/ I said. 

' Well/ said he, * they were going down to 
cut weed, and a man was sharpening his knife 
on a stone before he went. A young boy 
came into the kitchen, and he said to the man — 

* " What are you sharpening that knife 
for?" 

' " To kill your father with," said the man, 
and they the best of friends all the time. The 
young boy went back to his house and told 
his father there was a man sharpening a knife 
to kill him. 

'"Bedad," said the father, "if he has a 
knife I '11 have one too." 

* He sharpened his knife after that, and they 
went down to the strand. Then the two men 
began making fun about their knives, and 
from that they began raising their voices, and 
it wasn't long before there were ten men fight- 
ing with their knives, and they never stopped 
till there were five of them dead. 

* They buried them the day after, and when 

191 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

they were coming home, what did they see but 
the boy who began the work playing about 
with the son of the other man, and their two 
fathers down in their graves.' 

When he stopped, a gust of wind came and 
blew up a bundle of dry seaweed that was near 
us, right over our heads. 

Another old man began to talk. 

' That was a great wind,' he said. ' I 
remember one time there was a man in the 
south island who had a lot of wool up in 
shelter against the corner of a wall. He was 
after washing it, and drying it, and turning 
it, and he had it all nice and clean the way 
they could card it. Then a wind came down 
and the wool began blowing all over the wall. 
The man was throwing out his arms on it 
and trying to stop it, and another man saw 
him. 

* " The devil mend your head ! " says he, 
** the like of that wind is too strong for you." 

* " If the devil himself is in it," said the 
other man, " I '11 hold on to it while I can." 

' Then whether it was because of the word 
or not I don't know, but the whole of the wool 
went up over his head and blew all over the 
island, yet, when his wife came to spin after- 
wards she had all they expected, as if that 
lot was not lost on them at all.' 

* There was more than that in it,' said 
another man, * for the night before a woman 
had a great sight out to the west in this 
island, and saw all the people that were dead 
a while back in this island and the south 

192 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

island, and they all talking with each other. 
There was a man over from the other island 
that night, and he heard the woman talking 
of what she had seen. The next day he went 
back to the south island, and I think he was 
alone in the curagh. As soon as he came near 
the other island he saw a man fishing from 
the cliffs, and this man called out to him — 

* " Make haste now and go up and tell your 
mother to hide the poteen " — his mother used 
to sell poteen — " for I 'm after seeing the 
biggest party of peelers and yeomanry passing 
by on the rocks was ever seen on the island." 
It was at that time the wool was taken with 
the other man above, under the hill, and no 
peelers in the island at all.' 

A little after that the old men went away, 
and I was left with some young men between 
twenty and thirty, who talked to me of dif- 
ferent things. One of them asked me if ever 
I was drunk, and another told me I would be 
right to marry a girl out of this island, for 
they were nice women in it, fine fat girls, who 
would be strong, and have plenty of children,, 
and not be wasting my money on me. 

When the horses were coming ashore a 
curagh that was far out after lobster-pots 
came hurrying in, and a man out of her ran 
up the sandhills to meet a little girl who was 
coming down with a bundle of Sunday clothes. 
He changed them on the sand and then went 
out to the hooker, and went off to Connemara 
to bring back his horses. 

193 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

A young married woman I used often to 
talk with is dying of a fever — typhus I am 
told — and her husband and brothers have 
gone off in a curagh to get the doctor and 
the priest from the north island, though the 
sea is rough. 

I watched them from the Dun for a long 
time after they had started. Wind and rain 
were driving through the sound, and I could 
see no boats or people anywhere except this, 
one black curagh splashing and struggling 
through the waves. When the wind fell a 
little I could hear people hammering below 
me to the east. The body of a young man 
who was drowned a few weeks ago came 
ashore this morning, and his friends have been 
busy all day making a coffin in the yard of the 
house where he lived. 

After a while the curagh went out of sight 
into the mist, and I came down to the cottage 
shuddering with cold and misery. 

The old woman was keening by the fire. 

* I have been to the house where the young 
man is,' she said, * but I couldn't go to the 
door with the air was coming out of it. They 
say his head isn't on him at all, and indeed it 
isn't any wonder and he three weeks in the 
sea. Isn't it great danger and sorrow is over 
every one on this island ? " 

I asked her if the curagh would soon be 
coming back with the priest. 

* It will not be coming soon or at all 
to-night,' she said. * The wind has gone up 
now, and there will come no curagh to this 

194 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

island for maybe two days or three. And 
wasn't it a cruel thing to see the haste was on 
them, and they in danger all the time to be 
drowned themselves ? ' 

Then I asked her how the woman was doing. 

* She 's nearly lost/ said the old woman ; 
* she won't be alive at all to-morrow morning. 
They have no boards to make her a coffin, and 
they '11 want to borrow the boards that a man 
below has had this two years to bury his 
mother, and she alive still. I heard them say- 
ing there are two more women with the fever, 
and a child that 's not three. The Lord have 
mercy on us all ! ' 

I went out again to look over the sea, but 
night had fallen and the hurricane was howl- 
ing over the Dun. I walked down the lane 
and heard the keening in the house where the 
young man was. Further on I could see a 
stir about the door of the cottage that had 
been last struck by typhus. Then I turned 
back again in the teeth of the rain, and sat 
over the fire with the old man and woman 
talking of the sorrows of the people till it was 
late in the night. 

This evening the old man told me a story 
he had heard long ago on the mainland : — 

There was a young woman, he said, and 
she had a child. In a little time the woman 
died and they buried her the day after. That 
night another woman — a woman of the 
family — was sitting by the fire with the child 

195 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

on her lap, giving milk to it out of a cup. 
Then the woman they were after burying 
opened the door, and came into the house. 
She went over to the fire, and she took a stool 
and sat down before the other woman. Then 
she put out her hand and took the child on 
her lap, and gave it her breast. After that 
she put the child in the cradle and went over 
to the dresser and took milk and potatoes off 
it, and ate them. Then she went out. The 
other woman was frightened, and she told the 
man of the house when he came back, and two 
young men. They said they would be there 
the next night, and if she came back they 
would catch hold of her. She came the next 
night and gave the child her breast, and when 
she got up to go to the dresser, the man of the 
house caught hold of her, but he fell down 
on the floor. Then the two young men caught 
bold of her and they held her. She told them 
she was away with the fairies, and they could 
not keep her that night, though she was eating 
no food with the fairies, the way she might be 
able to come back to her child. Then she told 
them they would all be leaving that part of 
the country on the Oidhche Shamhna, and that 
there would be four or five hundred of them 
riding on horses, and herself would be on a 
grey horse, riding behind a young man. And 
she told them to go down to a bridge they 
would be crossing that night, and to wait at 
the head of it, and when she would be coming 
up she would slow the horse and they would 
be able to throw something on her and on the 
196 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

young man, and they would fall over on the 
ground and be saved. 

She went away then, and on the Oidhche 
Shamhna the men went down and got her 
back. She had four children after that, and 
in the end she died. 

It was not herself they buried at all the first 
time, but some old thing the fairies put in 
her place. 

* There are people who say they don't 
believe in these things,' said the old woman, 
* but there are strange things, let them say 
what they will. There was a woman went to 
bed at the lower village a while ago, and her 
child along with her. For a time they did not 
sleep, and then something came to the window, 
and they heard a voice and this is what it 
said — 

' " It is time to sleep from this out." 

* In the morning the child was dead, and 
indeed it is many get their death that way on 
the island.' 

The young man has been buried, and his 
funeral was one of the strangest scenes I have 
met with. People could be seen going down 
to his house from early in the day, yet when 
I went there with the old man about the 
middle of the afternoon, the coffin was still 
lying in front of the door, with the men and 
women of the family standing round beating 
it, and keening over it, in a great crowd of 
people. A little later every one knelt down 
197 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and a last prayer was said. Then the cousins 
of the dead man got ready two oars and some 
pieces of rope — the men of his own family 
seemed too broken with grief to know what 
they were doing — the coffin was tied up, and 
the procession began. The old woman walked 
close behind the coffin, and I happened to take 
a place just after them, among the first of the 
men. The rough lane to the graveyard slopes 
away towards the east, and the crowd of 
women going down before me in their red 
dresses, cloaked with red petticoats, with the 
waistband that is held round the head just 
seen from behind, had a strange effect, to 
which the white coffin and the unity of colour 
gave a nearly cloistral quietness. 

This time the graveyard was filled with 
withered grass and bracken instead of the 
early ferns that were to be seen everywhere 
at the other funeral I have spoken of, and the 
grief of the people was of a different kind, 
as they had come to bury a young man who 
had died in his first manhood, instead of an 
old woman of eighty. For this reason the 
keen lost a part of its formal nature, and was 
recited as the expression of intense personal 
grief by the young men and women of the 
man's own family. 

When the coffin had been laid down, near 
the grave that was to be opened, two long 
switches were cut out from the brambles 
among the rocks, and the length and breadth 
of the coffin were marked on them. Then the 
men began their work, clearing off stones and 
198 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

thin layers of earth, and breaking up an old 
coffin that was in the place into which the new 
one had to be lowered. When a number of 
blackened boards and pieces of bone had been 
thrown up with the clay, a skull was lifted out, 
and placed upon a gravestone. Immediately 
the old woman, the mother of the dead man, 
took it up in her hands, and carried it away 
by herself. Then she sat down and put it in 
her lap — it was the skull of her own mother 
— and began keening and shrieking over it 
with the wildest lamentation. 

As the pile of mouldering clay got higher 
beside the grave a heavy smell began to rise 
from it, and the men hurried with their work, 
measuring the hole repeatedly with the two 
rods of bramble. When it was nearly deep 
enough the old woman got up and came back 
to the coffin, and began to beat on it, holding 
the skull in her left hand. This last moment 
of grief was the most terrible of all. The 
young women were nearly lying among the 
stones, worn out with their passion of grief, 
yet raising themselves every few moments to 
beat with magnificent gestures on the boards 
of the coffin. The young men were worn out 
also, and their voices cracked continually in 
the wail of the keen. 

When everything was ready the sheet was 
unpinned from the coffin, and it was lowered 
into its place. Then an old man took a wooden 
vessel with holy water in it, and a wisp of 
bracken, and the people crowded round him 
while he splashed the water over them. They 
199 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

seemed eager to get as much of it as possible, 
more than one old woman crying out with 
a humorous voice — 

' Tabhair dham braon eile, a Mhourteen.* 
r Give me another drop, Martin/) 

When the grave was half filled in, I wan- 
dered round towards the north watching two 
seals that were chasing each other near the 
surf. I reached the Sandy Head as the light 
began to fail, and found some of the men I 
knew best fishing there with a sort of drag- 
net. It is a tedious process, and I sat for a 
long time on the sand watching the net being 
Dut out, and then drawn in again by eight men 
working together with a slow rhythmical 
movement. 

As they talked to me and gave me a little 
poteen and a little bread when they thought I 
was hungry, I could not help feeling that I 
was talking with men who were under a 
judgment of death. I knew that every one 
of them would be drowned in the sea in a few 
years and battered naked on the rocks, or 
would die in his own cottage and be buried 
with another fearful scene in the graveyard 
I had come from. 

When I got up this morning I found that 
the people had gone to Mass and latched the 
kitchen door from the outside, so that I could 
not open it to give myself light. 

I sat for nearly an hour beside the fire with 
a curious feeling that I should be quite alone 
in this little cottage. I am so used to sitting: 
200 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

here with the people that I have never felt the 
room before as a place where any man might 
live and work by himself. After a while as 
I waited, with just light enough from the 
chimney to let me see the rafters and the 
greyness of the walls, I became indescribably 
mournful, for I felt that this little corner on 
the face of the world, and the people who live 
in it, have a peace and dignity from which we 
are shut for ever. 

While I was dreaming, the old woman came 
in in a great hurry and made tea for me and 
the young priest, who followed her a little 
later drenched with rain and spray. 

The curate who has charge of the middle 
and south islands has a wearisome and 
dangerous task. He comes to this island or 
Inishere on Saturday night — whenever the 
sea is calm enough — and has Mass the first 
thing on Sunday morning. Then he goes 
down fasting and is rowed across to the other 
island and has Mass again, so that it is about 
midday when he gets a hurried breakfast 
before he sets off again for Aranmore, meet- 
ing often on both passages a rough and 
perilous sea. 

A couple of Sundays ago I was lying out- 
side the cottage in the sunshine smoking my 
pipe, when the curate, a man of the greatest 
kindliness and humour, came up, wet and worn 
out, to have his first meal. He looked at me 
for a moment and then shook his head. 

* Tell me,' he said, ' did you read your Bible 
this morning ? ' 

20 1 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I answered that I had not done so. 

' Well, begod, Mr. Synge,' he went on, * if 
you ever go to Heaven, you '11 have a great 
laugh at us. 

Although these people are kindly towards 
each other and to their children, they have no 
feeling for the sufferings of animals, and 
little sympathy for pain when the person 
who feels it is not in danger. I have some- 
times seen a girl writhing and howling with 
toothache while her mother sat at the other 
side of the fireplace pointing at her and laugh- 
ing at her as if amused by the sight. 

A few days ago, when we had been talking 
of the death of President M*Kinley, I ex- 
plained the American way of killing mur- 
derers, and a man asked me how long the man 
who killed the President would be dying. 

' While you 'd be snapping your fingers,' 
I said. 

' Well,' said the man, ' they might as well 
hang him so, and not be bothering themselves 
with all them wires. A man who would kill 
a King or a President knows he has to die for 
it, and it 's only giving him the thing he 
bargained for if he dies easy. It would be 
right he should be three weeks dying, and 
there 'd be fewer of those things done in the 
world.' 

If two dogs fight at the slip when we are 
waiting for the steamer, the men are delighted 
and do all they can to keep up the fury of the 
battle. 

202 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

They tie down donkeys' heads to their hoofs 
to keep them from straying, in a way that 
must cause horrible pain, and sometimes when 
I ^o into a cottage I find all the women of the 
place down on their knees plucking the 
feathers from live ducks and geese. 

When the people are in pain themselves they 
make no attempt to hide or control their feel- 
ings. An old man who was ill in the winter 
took me out the other day to show me how far 
down the road they could hear him yelling 
' the time he had a pain in his head.' 

There was a great storm this morning, and 
I went up on the cliff to sit in the shanty they 
have made there for the men who watch for 
wrack. Soon afterwards a boy, who was out 
minding sheep, came up from the west, and 
we had a long talk. 

He began by giving me the first connected 
account I have had of the accident that 
happened some time ago, when the young man 
was drowned on his way to the south island. 

* Some men from the south island,' he said, 
* came over and bought some horses on this 
island, and they put them in a hooker to take 
across. They wanted a curagh to go with 
them to tow the horses on to the strand, and 
a young man said he would go, and they could 
give him a rope and tow him behind the 
hooker. When they were out in the sound a 
wind came down on them, and the man in the 
curagh couldn't turn her to meet the waves, 
203 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

because the hooker was pulling her and she 
began filling up with water. 

* When the men in the hooker saw it they 
began crying out one thing and another thing 
without knowing what to do. One man called 
out to the man who was holding the rope: 
" Let go the rope now, or you '11 swamp her." 

' And the man with the rope threw it out 
on the water, and the curagh half -filled 
already, and I think only one oar in her. A 
wave came into her then, and she went down 
before them, and the young man began swim- 
ming about; then they let fall the sails in the 
hooker the way they could pick him up. And 
when they had them down they were too far 
off, and they pulled the sails up again the way 
they could tack back to him. He was there 
in the water swimming round, and swimming 
round, and before they got up with him again 
he sank the third time, and they didn't see 
any more of him.' 

I asked if anyone had seen him on the 
island since he was dead. 

' They have not,' he said, * but there were 
queer things in it. Before he went out on the 
sea that day his dog came up and sat beside 
him on the rocks, and began crying. When 
the horses were coming down to the slip an 
old woman saw her son, that was drowned a 
while ago, riding on one of them. She didn't 
say what she was after seeing, and this 
man caught the horse, he caught his own 
horse first, and then he caught this one, and 
after that he went out and was drowned. Two 
204 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

days after I dreamed they found him on the 
Ceann gaine (the Sandy Head) and carried 
him up to the house on the plain, and took his 
pampooties off him and hung them up on a 
nail to dry. It was there they found him 
afterwards as you '11 have heard them say.' 

' Are you always afraid when you hear a 
dog crying? ' I said. 

'We don't like it,' he answered; * you will 
often see them on the top of the rocks looking 
up into the heavens, and they crying. We 
don't like it at all, and we don't like a cock 
or hen to break anything in the house, for we 
know then some one will be going away. A 
while before the man who used to live in that 
cottage below died in the winter, the cock be- 
longing to his wife began to fight with 
another cock. The two of them flew up on 
the dresser and knocked the glass of the lamp 
off it, and it fell on the floor and was broken. 
The woman caught her cock after that and 
killed it, but she could not kill the other cock, 
for it was belonging to the man who lived 
in the next house. Then himself got a sick- 
ness and died after that.' 

I asked him if he ever heard the fairy music 
on the island. 

' I heard some of the boys talking in the 
school a while ago,' he said, ' and they were 
saying that their brothers and another man 
went out fishing a morning, two weeks ago^ 
before the cock crew. When they were down 
near the Sandy Head they heard music near 
them, and it was the fairies were in it. I 've 
205 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

heard of other things too. One time three 
men were out at night in a curagh, and they 
saw a big ship coming down on them. They 
were frightened at it, and they tried to get 
away, but it came on nearer them, till one of 
the men turned round and made the sign of 
the cross, and then they didn't see it any more.* 

Then he went on in answer to another ques- 
tion: 

' We do often see the people who do be 
away with them. There was a young man 
died a year ago, and he used to come to the 
window of the house where his brothers slept, 
and be talking to them in the night. He was 
married a while before that, and he used to 
be saying in the night he was sorry he had not 
promised the land to his son, and that it was 
to him it should go. Another time he was 
saying something about a mare, about her 
hoofs, or the shoes they should put on her. A 
little while ago Patch Ruadh saw him going 
down the road with broga arda (leather 
boots) on him and a new suit. Then two men 
saw him in another place. 

* Do you see that straight wall of cliff? ' he 
went on a few minutes later, pointing to a 
place below us. ' It is there the fairies do be 
playing ball in the night, and you can see the 
marks of their heels when you come in the 
morning, and three stones they have to mark 
the line, and another big stone they hop the 
ball on. It 's often the boys have put away 
the three stones, and they will always be back 
again in the morning, and a while since the 
206 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

man who owns the land took the big stone 
itself and rolled it down and threw it over the 
cliff, yet in the morning it was back in its 
place before him.* 

I am in the south island again, and I have 
come upon some old men with a wonderful 
variety of stories and songs, the last, fairly 
often, both in English and Irish. I went 
round to the house of one of them to-day, 
with a native scholar who can write Irish, and 
we took down a certain number, and heard 
others. Here is one of the tales the old man 
told us at first before he had warmed to his 
subject. I did not take it down, but it ran in 
this way: — 

There was a man of the name of Charley 
Lambert, and every horse he would ride in a 
race he would come in the first. 

The people in the country were angry with 
him at last, and this law was made, that he 
should ride no more at races, and if he rode, 
any one who saw him would have the right 
to shoot him. After that there was a gentle- 
man from that part of the country over in 
England, and he was talking one day with the 
people there, and he said that the horses of 
Ireland were the best horses. The English 
said it was the English horses were the best, 
and at last they said there should be a race, 
and the English horses would come over and 
race against the horses of Ireland, and the 
gentleman put all his money on that race. 
207 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Well, when he came back to Ireland he went 
to Charley Lambert, and asked him to ride 
on his horse. Charley said he would not ride, 
and told the gentleman the danger he 'd be in. 
Then the gentleman told him the way he had 
put all his property on the horse, and at last 
Charley asked where the races were to be, and 
the hour and the day. The gentleman told 
him. 

' Let you put a horse with a bridle and 
saddle on it every seven miles along the road 
from here to the racecourse on that day,' said 
Lambert, * and I '11 be in it.' 

When the gentleman was gone, Charley 
stripped off his clothes and got into his bed. 
Then he sent for the doctor, and when he 
heard him coming he began throwing about 
his arms the way the doctor would think his 
pulse was up with the fever. 

The doctor felt his pulse and told him to 
stay quiet till the next day, when he would see 
him again. 

The next day it was the same thing, and 
so on till the day of the races. That morning 
Charley had his pulse beating so hard the 
doctor thought bad of him. 

' I 'm going to the races now, Charley,' said 
he, * but I '11 come in and see you again when 
I '11 be coming back in the evening, and let you 
be very careful and quiet till you see me.' 

As soon as he had gone Charley leapt up 
out of bed and got on his horse, and rode seven 
miles to where the first horse was waiting for 
him. Then he rode that horse seven miles, 

208 




An Island Horseman 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

and another horse seven miles more, till he 
came to the racecourse. 

He rode on the gentleman's horse and he 
won the race. 

There were great crowds looking on, and 
when they saw him coming in they said it was 
Charley Lambert, or the devil was in it, for 
there was no one else could bring in a horse 
the way he did, for the leg was after being 
knocked off of the horse and he came in all 
the same. 

When the race was over, he got up on the 
horse was waiting for him, and away with 
him for seven miles. Then he rode the other 
horse seven miles, and his own horse seven 
miles, and when he got home he threw off his 
clothes and lay down on his bed. 

After a while the doctor came back and said 
it was a great race they were after having. 

The next day the people were saying it was 
Charley Lambert was the man who rode the 
horse. An inquiry was held, and the doctor 
swore that Charley was ill in his bed, and he 
had seen him before the race and after it, so 
the gentleman saved his fortune. 

After that he told me another story of the 
same sort about a fairy rider, who met a 
gentleman that was after losing all his fortune 
but a shilling, and begged the shilling of him. 
The gentleman gave him the shilling, and the 
fairy rider — a little red man — rode a horse 
for him in a race, waving a red handker- 

211 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

chief to him as a signal when he was to double 
the stakes, and made him a rich man. 

Then he gave us an extraordinary English 
doggerel rhyme which I took down, though 
it seems singularly incoherent when written 
out at length. These rhymes are repeated by 
the old men as a sort of chant, and when a 
line comes that is more than usually irregular 
they seem to take a real delight in forcing it 
into the mould of the recitative. All the time 
he was chanting the old man kept up a kind of 
snakelike movement in his body, which seemed 
to fit the chant and make it part of him. 

THE WHITE HORSE 

My horse he is white, 
Though at first he was bay, 
And he took great delight 
In travelling by night 
And by day. 

His travels were great 

If I could but half of them tell, 

He was rode in the garden by Adam, 

The day that he fell. 

On Babylon plains 

He ran with speed for the plate, 

He was hunted next day 

By Hannibal the great. 

After that he was hunted 

In the chase of a fox, 

When Nebuchadnezzar ate grass, 

In the shape of an ox. 

We are told in the next verses of his going 
into the ark with Noah, of Moses riding him 
through the Red Sea; then 

212 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

He was with king Pharaoh in Egypt 
When fortune did smile, 
And he rode him stately along 
The gay banks of the Nile. 

He was with king Saul and all 
His troubles went through, 
He was with king David the day 
That Goliath he slew. 



For a few verses he is with Juda and Mac- 
cabeus the great, with Cyrus, and back again 
to Babylon. Next we find him as the horse 
Ihat came into Troy. 

When ( ) came to Troy with joy, 

My horse he was found, 
He crossed over the walls and entered 
The city I'm told. 



I come on him again, in Spain, 
And he in full bloom. 
By Hannibal the great he was rode, 
And he crossing the Alps into Rome. 

The horse being tall 

And the Alps very high, 

His rider did fall 

And Hannibal the great lost an eye. 

Afterwards he carries young Sipho (Scipio), 
and then he is ridden by Brian when driving 
the Danes from Ireland, and by St. Ruth when 
he fell at the battle of Aughrim, and by Sars- 
field at the siege of Limerick. 

He was with king James who sailed 

To the Irish shore, 

But at last he got lame. 

When the Boyne's bloody battle was o'er. 

213 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

He was rode by the greatest of men 
At famed Waterloo, 
Brave Daniel O'Connell he sat 
On his back it is true. 



Brave Dan's on his back, 
He's ready once more for the field. 
He never will stop till the Tories, 
He'll make them to yield. 

Grotesque as this long rhyme appears, it has, 
as I said, a sort of existence when it is crooned 
by the old man at his fireside, and it has great 
fame in the island. The old man himself is 
hoping that I will print it, for it would not be 
fair, he says, that it should die out of the 
world, and he is the only man here who knows 
it, and none of them have ever heard it on the 
mainland. He has a couple more examples of 
the same kind of doggerel, but I have not taken 
them down. 

Both in English and in Irish the songs are 
full of words the people do not understand 
themselves, and when they come to say the 
words slowly their memory is usually un- 
certain. 

All the morning I have been digging 
maidenhair ferns with a boy I met on the 
rocks, who was in great sorrow because his 
father died suddenly a week ago of a pain in 
his heart. 

* We wouldn't have chosen to lose our father 
for all the gold there is in the world,' he said, 
* and it 's great loneliness and sorrow there is 
in the house now.' 

214 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Then he told me that a brother of his who 
is a stoker in the Navy had come home a Httle 
while before his father died, and that he had 
spent all his money in having a fine funeral, 
with plenty of drink at it, and tobacco. 

' My brother has been a long way in the 
world,' he said, * and seen great wonders. He 
does be telling us of the people that do come 
out to them from Italy, and Spain, and Portu- 
gal, and that it is a sort of Irish they do be 
talking — not English at all — though it is only 
a word here and there you'd understand.' 

When we had dug out enough of roots from 
the deep crannies in the rocks where they are 
only to be found, I gave my companion a few 
pence, and sent him back to his cottage. 

The old man who tells me the Irish poems 
is curiously pleased with the translations I 
have made from some of them. 

He would never be tired, he says, listening 
while I would be reading them, and they are 
much finer things than his old bits of rhyme. 

Here is one of them, as near the Irish as I 
am able to make it : — 

RUCARD MOR 

I put the sorrow of destruction on the bad luck, 

For it would be a pity ever to deny it, 

It is to me it is stuck, 

By loneliness my pain, my complaining. 

It is the fairy-host 

Put me a-wandering 

And took from me my goods of the world. 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

At Mannistir na Ruaidthe 

It is on me the shameless deed was done: 

Finn Bheara and his fairy-host 

Took my little horse on me from under the bag. 

If they left me the skin 

It would bring me tobacco for three months. 
But they did not leave anything with me 
But the old minister in its place. 

Am not I to be pitied? 

My bond and my note are on her, 

And the price of her not yet paid, 

My loneliness, my pain, my complaining. 

The devil a hill or a glen, or highest fort 
Ever was built in Ireland, 
Is not searched on me for my mare. 
And I am still at my complaining. 

I got up in the morning, 
I put a re<l spark in my pipe. 
I went to the Cnoc-Maithe 
To get satisfaction from them. 

I spoke to them. 

If it was in them to do a right thing, 

To get me my little mare. 

Or I would be changing my wits. 

* Do you hear, Rucard Mor ? 

It is not here is your mare, 

She is in Glenasmoil 

With the fairy-men these three months.* 

I ran on in my walking, 

I folloiwed the road straightly, 

I was in Glenasmoil 

Before the moon was ended. 

I spoke to the fairy-man, 

If it was in him to do a right thing, 

To get me my little mare, 

Or I would be changing my wits. 

2l6 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

' Do you hear, Rucard Mor ? 
It is not here is your mare, 
She is in Cnoc Bally Brishlawn 
With the horseman of the music these three 
months/ 

I ran off on my walking, 
Ifollowed the road straightly, 
I was in Cnoc Bally Brishlawn 
With the black fall of the night. 

That is a place was a crowd 

As it was seen by me, 

All the weavers of the globe, 

It is there you would have news of them. 

I spoke to the horseman, 

If it was in him to do the right thing, 

To get me my little mare, 

Or I would be changing my wits. 

' Do you hear, Rucard Mor ? 
It is not here is your mare. 
She is in Cnoc Cruachan, 
In the back end of the palace.' 

I ran off on my walking, 

I followed the road straightly, 

I made no rest or stop 

Till I was in face of the palace. 

That is the place was a crowd 

As it appeared to me, 

The men and women of the country. 

And they all making merry. 

Arthur Scoil (?) stood up 

And began himself giving the lead, 

It is joyful, light and active, 

I would have danced the course with them. 

They drew up on their feet 

And they began to laugh, — 

* Look at Rucard Mor, 

And he looking for his little mare.* 

217 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I spoke to the man, 

And he ugly and humpy, 

Unless he would get me my mare 

I would break a third of his bones. 

' Do you hear, Rucard Mor ? 
It is not here is your mare. 
She is in Alvin of Leinster, 
On a halter with my mother.' 

I ran off on my walking, 

And I came to Alvin of Leinstre. 

I met the old woman — 

On my word she was not pleasing. 

I spoke to the old woman, 
And she broke out in English: 

* Get agone, you rascal, 

I don't like your notions.' 

* Do you hear, you old woman ? 
Keep away from me with your English, 
But speak to me with the tongue 

I hear from every person.' 

* It is from me you will get word of her, 
Only you come too late — 

I made a hunting cap 

For Conal Cath of her yesterday.' 

I ran off on my walking. 

Through roads that were cold and dirty, 

I fell in with the fairy-man, 

And he lying down on in the Ruadthe. 

* I pity a man without a cow, 
I pity a man without a sheep. 

But in the case of a man without a horse 
It is hard for him to be long in the world.' 

This morning, when I had been lying for a 
long time on a rock near the sea watching 
some hooded crows that were dropping shell- 
fish on the rocks to break them, I saw one bird 
that had a large white object which it was 
dropping continually without any result. I 
218 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

got some stones and tried to drive it off when 
the thing had fallen, but several times the bird 
was too quick for me and made off with it 
before I could get down to him. At last, how- 
ever, I dropped a stone almost on top of him 
and he flew away. I clambered down hastily, 
and found to my amazement a worn golf -ball ! 
No doubt it had been brought out in some 
way or other from the links in County Clare, 
which are not far off, and the bird had been 
trying half the morning to break it. 

Further on I had a long talk with a young 
man who is inquisitive about modern life, and 
I explained to him an elaborate trick or corner 
on the Stock Exchange that I heard of lately. 
When I got him to understand it fully, he 
shouted with delight and amusement. 

* Well,' he said when he was quiet again, 
' isn't it a great wonder to think that those 
rich men are as big rogues as ourselves.' 

The old story-teller has given me a long 
rhyme about a man who fought with an eagle. 
It is rather irregular and has some obscure 
passages, but I have translated it with the 
scholar. 

PHELIM AND THE EAGLE 

On my getting up in the morning 

And I bothered, on a Sunday, 

I put my brouges on me, 

And I going to Tierny 

In the Glen of the Dead People. 

It is there the big eagle fell in with me, 

He like a black stack of turf sitting up stately. 

219 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I called him a lout and a fool, 

The son of a female and a fool, 

Of the race of the Clan Cleopas, the biggest 

rogues in the land. 
That and my seven curses 
And never a good day to be on you. 
Who stole my little cock from me that 

could crow the sweetest. 

* Keep your wits right in you 
And don't curse me too greatly, 
By my strength and mv oath 

I never took rent of you, 

I didn't grudge what you would have to 

spare 
In the house of the burnt pigeons. 
It is alwavs useful you were to men of 

business. 

* But get off home 
And ask Nora 

What name was on the young woman that 

scalded his head. 
The feathers there were on his ribs 
Are burnt on the hearth, 
And they eat him and they taking and it 

wasn't much were thankful.' 

* You are a liar, you stealer. 

They did not eat him, and they're taking 
Nor a taste of the sort without being 

thankful. 
You took him yesterday 
As Nora told me, 
And the harvest quarter will not be spent 

till I take a tax of you.' 

* Before I lost the Fianna 
It was a fine boy I was, 

It was not about thieving was my 

knowledge, 
But always putting spells. 
Playing games and matches with the 

strength of Gol MacMorna, 
And you are making me a rogue. 
At the end of my life.' 

220 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

* There is a part of my father's books with 

me, 
Keeping in the bottom of a box, 
And when I read them the tears fall down 

from me. 
But I found out in history 
That you are a son of the Dearg Mor, 
If it is fighting you want and you won't be 

thankful.' 



The Eagle dressed his bravery 

With bis share of arms and his clothes, 

He had the sword that was the sharpest 

Could be got anywhere. 

I and my scythe with me, 

And nothing on but my shirt, 

We went at each other early in the day. 

We were as two giants 

Ploughing in a valley in a glen of the 

mountains. 
We did not know for the while which was 

the better man. 
You could hear the shakes that were on our 

arms under each other. 
From that till the sunset. 
Till it was forced on him to give up. 

I wrote a ' challenge boxail ' to him 

On the morning of the next day, 

To come till we would fight without doubt 

at the dawn of the day. 
The second fist I drew on him 
I struck him on the bone of his jaw, 
He fell, and it is no lie there was a cloud 

in his head. 

The Eagle stood up. 

He took the end of my hand: — 

* You are the finest man I ever saw in my 
life, 

Go off home, my blessing will be on you 
for ever, 

You have saved the fame of Eire for your- 
self till the Day of the Judgment.' 

221 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

Ah! neighbors, did you hear 

The goodness and power of Felim ? 

The biggest wild beast you could get, 

The second fist he drew on it 

He struck it on the jaw. 

It fell, and it did not rise 

Till the end of two days. 

Well as I seem to know these people of the 
islands, there is hardly a day that I do not 
come upon some new primitive feature of their 
life. 

Yesterday I went into a cottage where the 
woman was at work and very carelessly 
dressed. She waited for a while till I got 
into conversation with her husband, and then 
she slipped into the corner and put on a clean 
petticoat and a bright shawl round her neck. 
Then she came back and took her place at the 
fire. 

This evening I was in another cottage till 
very late talking to the people. When the 
little boy — the only child of the house — ^got 
sleepy, the old grandmother took him on her 
lap and began singing to him. As soon as he 
was drowsy she worked his clothes off him by 
degrees, scratching him softly with her nails 
as she did so all over his body. Then she 
washed his feet with a little water out of a 
pot and put him into his bed. 

When I was going home the wind was 
driving the sand into my face so that I could 
hardly find my way. I had to hold my hat 
over my mouth and nose, and my hand over 
my eyes while I groped along, with my feet 
feeling for rocks and holes in the sand. 

222 






JU^ 







The Man Who Told The Stories 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

I have been sitting all the morning with an 
old man who was making sugawn ropes for 
his house, and telling me stories while he 
worked. He was a pilot when he was young, 
and we had great talk at first about Germans, 
and Italians, and Russians, and the ways of 
seaport towns. Then he came round to talk 
of the middle island, and he told me this story 
which shows the curious jealousy that is 
between the islands : — 

Long ago we used all to be pagans, and the 
saints used to be coming to teach us about God 
and the creation of the world. The people on 
the middle island were the last to keep a hold 
on the fire-worshipping, or whatever it was 
they had in those days, but in the long run a 
saint got in among them and they began 
listening to him, though they would often say 
in the evening they believed, and then say the 
morning after that, they did not believe. In 
the end the saint gained them over and they 
began building a church, and the saint had 
tools that were in use with them for working 
with the stones. When the church was half- 
way up the people held a kind of meeting one 
night among themselves, when the saint was 
asleep in his bed, to see if they did really 
believe and no mistake in it. 

The leading man got up, and this is what 
he said : that they should go down and throw 
their tools over the cliff, for if there was such 
a man as God, and if the saint was as well 
known to Him as he said, then he would be as 

225 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

well able to bring up the tools out of the sea 
as they were to throw them in. 

They went then and threw their tools over 
the cliff. 

When the saint came down to the church 
in the morning the workmen were all sitting 
on the stones and no work doing. 

' For what cause are you idle ? ' asked the 
saint. 

' We have no tools,' said the men, and then 
they told him the story of what they had done. 

He kneeled down and prayed God that the 
tools might come up out of the sea, and after 
that he prayed that no other people might ever 
be as great fools as the people on the middle 
island, and that God might preserve their dark 
minds of folly to them till the end of the 
world. And that is why no man out of that 
island can tell you a whole story without 
stammering, or bring any work to end without 
a fault in it. 

I asked him if he had known old Pat Dirane 
on the middle island, and heard the fine stories 
he used to tell. 

' No one knew him better than I did,' he 
said ; * for I do often be in that island making 
curaghs for the people. One day old Pat came 
down to me when I was after tarring a new 
curagh, and he asked me to put a little tar on 
the knees of his breeches the way the rain 
wouldn't come through on him. 

' I took the brush in my hand, and I had 
him tarred down to his feet before he knew 
226 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

what I was at. " Turn round the other side 
now," I said, " and you'll be able to sit where 
you like." Then he felt the tar coming in hot 
against his skin and he began cursing my 
soul, and I was sorry for the trick I'd played 
on him.' 

This old man was the same type as the 
genial, whimsical old men one meets all 
through Ireland, and had none of the local 
characteristics that are so marked on Inish- 
maan. 

When we were tired talking I showed some 
of my tricks and a little crowd collected. 
When they were gone another old man who 
had come up began telling us about the fairies. 
One night when he was coming home from the 
lighthouse he heard a man riding on the road 
behind him, and he stopped to wait for him, 
but nothing came. Then he heard as if there 
was a man trying to catch a horse on the rocks, 
and in a little time he went on. The noise 
behind him got bigger as he went along as if 
twenty horses, and then as if a hundred or a 
thousand, were galloping after him. When 
he came to the stile where he had to leave the 
road and got out over it, something hit against 
him and threw him down on the rock, and a 
gun he had in his hand fell into the field beyond 
him. 

' I asked the priest we had at that time what 
was in it,' he said, * and the priest told me it 
was the fallen angels; and I don't know but 
it was.' 

* Another time,' he went on, ' I was coming 
227 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

down where there is a bit of a cliff and a Httle 
hole under it, and I heard a flute playing in 
the hole or beside it, and that was before the 
dawn began. Whatever anyone says there 
are strange things. There was one night 
thirty years ago a man came down to get my 
wife to go up to his wife, for she was in 
childbed. 

' He was something to do with the light- 
house or the coastguard, one of them Protest- 
ants who don't believe in any of these things 
and do be making fun of us. Well, he asked 
me to go down and get a quart of spirits 
while my wife would be getting herself ready, 
and he said he would go down along with me 
if I was afraid. 

* I said I was not afraid, and I went by 
myself. 

* When I was coming back there was some- 
thing on the path, and wasn't I a foolish 
fellow, I might have gone to one side or the 
other over the sand, but I went on straight till 
I was near it — till I was too near it — then 
I remembered that I had heard them saying 
none of those creatures can stand before you 
and you saying the De Profundis, so I began 
saying it, and the thing ran off over the sand 
and I got home. 

' Some of the people used to say it was only 
an old jackass that was on the path before me, 
but I never heard tell of an old jackass would 
run away from a man and he saying the De 
Profundis/ 

I told him the story of the fairy ship which 
228 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

had disappeared when the man made the sign 
of the cross, as I had heard it on the middle 
island. 

' There do be strange things on the sea,' 
he said. ' One night I was down there where 
you can see that green point, and I saw a ship 
coming in and I wondered what it would be 
doing coming so close to the rocks. It came 
straight on towards the place I was in, and 
then I got frightened and I ran up to the 
houses, and when the captain saw me running 
he changed his course and went away. 

' Sometimes I used to go out as a pilot at 
that time — I went a few times only. Well, 
one Sunday a man came down and said there 
was a big ship coming into the sound. I ran 
down with two men and we went out in a 
curagh; we went round the point where they 
said the ship was, and there was no ship in it. 
As it was a Sunday we had nothing to do, 
and it was a fine, calm day, so we rowed out 
a long way looking for the ship, till I was 
further than I ever was before or after. 
When I wanted to turn back we saw a great 
flock of birds on the water and they all black, 
without a white bird through them. They 
had no fear of us at all, and the men with me 
wanted to go up to them, so we went further. 
When we were quite close they got up, so 
many that they blackened the sky, and 
they lit down again a hundred or maybe a 
hundred and twenty yards off. We went 
after them again, and one of the men wanted 
to kill one with a thole-pin, and the other man 
229 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

wanted to kill one with his rowing stick. I 
was afraid they would upset the curagh, but 
they would go after the birds. 

' When we were quite close one man threw 
the pin and the other man hit at them with his 
rowing stick, and the two of them fell over in 
the curagh, and she turned on her side and 
only it was quite calm the lot of us were 
drowned. 

' I think those black gulls and the ship were 
the same sort, and after that I never went out 
again as a pilot. It is often curaghs go out 
to ships and find there is no ship. 

* A while ago a curagh went out to a ship 
from the big island, and there was no ship; 
and all the men in the curagh were drowned. 
A fine song was made about them after that, 
though I never heard it myself. 

' Another day a curagh was out fishing 
from this island, and the men saw a hooker 
not far from them, and they rowed up to it 
to get a light for their pipes — at that time 
there were no matches — and when they up 
to the big boat it was gone out of its place, 
and they were in great fear.' 

Then he told me a story he had got from 
the mainland about a man who was driving 
one night through the country, and met a 
woman who came up to him and asked him 
to take her into his cart. He thought some- 
thing was not right about her, and he went 
on. When he had gone a little way he looked 
back, and it was a pig was on the road and 
not a woman at all. 

230 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

He thought he was a done man, but he went 
on. When he was going through a wood 
further on, two men came out to him, one 
from each side of the road, and they took hold 
of the bridle of the horse and led it on between 
them. They were old stale men with frieze 
clothes on them, and the old fashions. When 
they came out of the wood he found people 
as if there was a fair on the road, with the 
people buying and selling and they not living 
people at all. The old men took him through 
the crowd, and then they left him. When he 
got home and told the old people of the two 
old men and the ways and fashions they had 
about them, the old people told him it was 
his two grandfathers had taken care of him, 
for they had had a great love for him and he 
a lad growing up. 

This evening we had a dance in the inn 
parlour, where a fire had been lighted and the 
tables had been pushed into the corners. 
There was no master of the ceremonies, and 
when I had played two or three jigs and other 
tunes on my fiddle, there was a pause, as I did 
not know how much of my music the people 
wanted, or who else could be got to sing or 
play. For a moment a deadlock seemed to be 
coming, but a young girl I knew fairly well 
saw my difficulty, and took the management 
of our festivities into her hands. At first she 
asked a coastguard's daughter to play a reel 
on the mouth organ, which she did at once 
with admirable spirit and rh3rthm. Then the 
231 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

little girl asked me to play again, telling me 
what I should choose, and went on in the 
same way managing the evening till she 
thought it was time to go home. Then she 
stood up, thanked me in Irish, and walked out 
of the door, without looking at anybody, but 
followed almost at once by the whole party. 

When they had gone I sat for a while on a 
barrel in the public-house talking to some 
}^ung men who were reading a paper in Irish. 
Then I had a long evening with the scholar 
and two story-tellers — both old men who 
had been pilots — taking down stories and 
poems. We were at work for nearly six 
hours, and the more matter we got the more 
the old men seemed to remember. 

' I was to go out fishing tonight,* said the 
younger as he came in, * but I promised you 
to come, and you 're a civil man, so I wouldn't 
take five pounds to break my word to you. 
And now ' — taking up his glass of whisky — 
' here 's to your good health, and may you live 
till they make you a coffin out of a gooseberry 
bush, or till you die in childbed.' 

They drank my health and our work began. 

' Have you heard tell of the poet 
MacSweeny ? ' said the same man, sitting 
down near me. 

* I have,' I said, * in the town of Galway.' 

' Well,' he said, ' I '11 tell you his piece " The 
Big Wedding," for it 's a fine piece and there 
aren't many that know it. There was a poor 
servant girl out in the country, and she got 
married to a poor servant boy. MacSweeny 
232 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

knew the two of them, and he was away at 
that time and it was a month before he came 
back. When he came back he went to see 
Peggy O'Hara — that was the name of the 
girl — and he asked her if they had had a 
great wedding. Peggy said it was only 
middling, but they hadn't forgotten him all 
the same, and she had a bottle of whisky for 
him in the cupboard. He sat down by the fire 
and began drinking the whisky. When he had 
a couple of glasses taken and was warm by the 
fire, he began making a song, and this was 
the song he made about the wedding of Peggy 
O'Hara.' 

He had the poem both in English and Irish, 
but as it has been found elsewhere and at- 
tributed to another folk-poet, I need not give 
it. 

We had another round of porter and 
whisky, and then the old man who had 
MacSweeny's wedding gave us a bit of a 
drinking song, which the scholar took down 
and I translated with him afterwards: — 



* This is what the old woman says at the 
Beulleaca when she sees a man without knowl- 
edge — 

* Were you ever at the house of the Still, 
did you ever get a drink from it? Neither 
wine nor beer is as sweet as it is, but it is 
well I was not burnt when I fell down after a 
drink of it by the fire of Mr. Sloper. 

' I praise Owen O'Hernon over all the 
233 



THE ARAN ISLANDS 

doctors of Ireland, it is he put drugs on the 
water, and it lying on the barley. 

' If you gave but a drop of it to an old 
woman who does be walking the world with a 
stick, she would think for a week that it was 
a fine bed was made for her.' 

After that I had to get out my fiddle and 
play some tunes for them while they finished 
their whisky. A new stock of porter was 
brought in this morning to the little public- 
house underneath my room, and I could hear 
in the intervals of our talk that a number of 
men had come in to treat some neighbors from 
the middle island, and were singing many 
songs, some of them in English of the kind I 
have given, but most of them in Irish. 

A little later when the party broke up down- 
stairs my old men got nervous about the 
fairies — they live some distance away — and 
set off across the sandhills. 

The next day I left with the steamer. 



234 



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